The openTrends community has released openFrame 2.0. openFrame is a J2EE development framework, designed with the need to constantly upgrade and adapt a platform of this type.    * Years of experience by openTrends staff in the development and implementation of corporate applications in business settings    * The experience in architecture design    * The application of commonly accepted standards as part of an open architecture (Model View Controller, use of design templates and J2EE-Blue Prints)    * Integration of OpenSource solutions that have been proven and certified by the framework development team (low cost of the solutions with the reliability and features of the commercial suites) Enhancements Summary of main enhancements to openFrame 2.0:    * Upgrade to Spring 2.5    * Services configuration: Have been incorporated default configuration descriptors to services    * Web presentation tier: Bugs have been corrected for various services    * Spring AOP: Eliminated the dependence with AspectWerkz. AOP in services now use Spring AOP, maintaining support for the old handlers that used AspectWerkz    * Persistence service: IBATIS 2.3.2 has incorporated as an alternative to Hibernate. It has also been standardized and refactor the DAO hierarchy provided by the service    * Security service:       - Upgrade to Spring Security 2.0.3       - New control CAPTCHA       - New functionality to generate robust passwords and / or to test the robustness of passwords    * Reporting service: Programmatic use for Jasper Reports    * Validation service: - Allows to validate javascript on the client side or with AJAX and java in server, you can validate on the server side without requiring javascript - There is no need to code in the JSP, all code is included in the configuration associated with actions' forms - Incorporate business logic to validation process forms    * Mailing service: Indicates the priority of a message and, also, dynamically attached documents    * Configuration service: Lets choose an environment for a particular configuration over the default    * Core service: Now allows more flexibility in the process of data binding, allowing choose when initialize the nested properties    * Scheduler service: Lets deploy tasks in cluster * XML service: Allow marshall / unmarshall between object and XML using User Converters * FTP service: New implementation and SFTP support * LDAP service: New service Applications New example applications included with openFrame 2.0: * Template, preconfigured application with web tier and persistence service in order to begin building an application right away. * Tutorial, which implements the use case of listing and an entity maintenance. * Prototype, with cases of use of most services. Download applications here. Please send comments, questions, etc. to openTrends.

Thanks for this framework. Really nice of you, but what is it doing? I could not figure out what the heck it is doing by either reading this article or going to your website. I have a rule of thumb: If I can't figure out what a framework is doing within 5 minutes, it is probably not worth investigating. You should at least have a simple example or quick guide or intro or something right at your website if you want to improve your download rate. So, please, provide a quick overview how this framework makes me more productive. Thank you!

Please also describe the comparison of this framework with existing ones (of similar nature).

A quick overview how this framework makes anyone more productive:

• Common services “out-of-box”, already tested and ready to start developing.
• Isolation of services' implementation complexity, to improve productivity
• Prototype application with examples of use of different services (openFrame-samples-2.0.zip at http://sourceforge.net/projects/openframe)
• Consistent, quality and stable Architecture, as it is the result of 4 years of constant evolution and testing.
• Implanted into multiple customers in Europe.
• Under the roadmap of openFrame, 2 is expected to incorporate key elements in improving the productivity of development on the framework:
* Incorporation of RIA presentation layer, based on GWT and extjs (openFrame 2.1)
* First openFrame IDE community version, an Eclipse plugin that allows you to:

1.    Create a project openFrame 2.0 (with only 3 mouse clicks) deployed and operational.
2.    Configuration of services using forms PDE (avoiding tedious and endless XML)
3.    Outline view for services and Action from application.
4.    Etc.

As far as I know, it's a wrapper for Spring framework. Not sure if it abstracts Spring completely, in the way Spring abstracts other frameworks (e.g. Hibernate). If I want to use Spring or Struts or Hibernate I'd do it directly, not by adding more layers that in the end hurt performance.

That's not entirely true:

As far as I know, it's a wrapper for Spring framework. Not sure if it abstracts Spring completely, in the way Spring abstracts other frameworks (e.g. Hibernate).

the openFrame services always provides an extra feature, for example (as you can see in some of the enhancements for release 2.0): scheduler service Lets deploy tasks in cluster , or the new control CAPTCHA in security service ... In short, I invite you to try it more thoroughly to see if you change your opinion.