Skyway Software announces the general availability (GA) of Skyway Builder Community Edition (CE) 6.1, an open source, code generator for the Spring Framework. Version 6.1 of Skyway Builder CE is available for immediate download. This major release of Skyway Builder CE includes: - New Spring MVC scaffolding capability that enables developers to generate a Spring-based, Java CRUD application from a domain model in minutes - New support for Apache Maven for build automation - Improved code generation for all layers (domain, DAO, web and service) of an application based on best practices - New modeling steps for improved integration with custom Java code and Spring Beans - Direct generation into Standard Eclipse Dynamic Web Java Project - Compatibility with SpringSource tooling (Spring IDE and Spring STS) - Embedded documentation and cheatsheet tutorial - Over 300 bug fixes and enhancements For more information, visit the project home page at http://www.skywayperspectives.org. Download Skyway Builder CE 6.1 at http://www.skywayperspectives.org/downloads.

Isn't it a bad sign for Spring when you begin to need a code generator for it? Is Spring no longer a lightweight alternative to JEE?

Actually it is quite the opposite. We chose Spring as our first software generation target for the same reason that developers choose to use it when they are writing code by hand. Those reasons are all centered around simplicity, flexibility, and neutrality on many technology fronts. For any project, there are the fun cool parts of the development cycle, and there are the tedious parts, regardless of the implementation approach. Skyway's goal has always been to abstract the things that are tedious, and to write first class generators and rich editors around those concepts. Spring does a really good job of abstraction at runtime, and so it fits perfectly with our approach for design and generation.