[Springframework-developer] Creating reusable component packages with Spring

[James C. <jim...@do...>]

We have been developing a large enterprise application using Spring and =
it
has proven to be a very effective framework. We use the Data access
abstractions heavily, along with transaction management and Hibernate
support.

Now that we have most of the concepts down, some coworkers and myself =
are
now considering the challenges inherent in packaging our business =
objects,
service layers, spring configuration files, etc. into reusable component
packages. We want to be able to give other developers in the company a =
jar
file that contains all of this content and simply drop it into their
project.

There are a lot of similarities (and differences) between what we face =
and
what EJB components deal with. EJB has solutions for mapping =
dependencies in
a component package to the primary application (ejb-ref, etc.) and we =
are
beginning to talk about how to accomplish similar behavior using Spring.

Ultimately, there are probably many nuances to this process that we =
won't
know until we actual do it, but I was wondering if the development team =
has
some insight into some of the Spring features that already exist that =
can
assist in some of these challenges? Perhaps also there are some features
that are on the drawing board to assist in this matter also?