When Norman Richards first encountered Seam, he was looking for a way to get away from sticky glue code and micro-managing beans in XML. "What I found was a fundamentally different way to write web applications," he says. "I think JBoss Seam not only ups the bar for Java web frameworks, but I think it provides a clear counter to those who would argue that Java just can't compete with a more dynamic language like Ruby."

This same informed enthusiasm characterized his entire presentation at the Real-World Java Seminar in New York City today, the all-day event produced by SYS-CON Events and held in The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

Richards showed attendees how Seam can manage state information in a Web application, overcoming the fundamental limitations of the HTTP session and enabling entirely new contexts that dramatically extend the capabilities of Web applications. He showed how Seam does all of this while simplifying Web application development and reducing the amount of code (and XML) that the developer has to write.

As a framework for managing contextual components, nothing beats JBoss Seam. "Seam unifies these diverse component models, like JavaBeans, POJOs, Enterprise JavaBeans, letting you think of them all as simply application components," said Richards. 

Seam 2.0 introduces the following changes and new features:

• Seam WS allows Seam components to function as Web Service endpoints
• Seam components may now be writted in Groovy
• The Seam core is now independent of JSF
• Experimental support for the Google Web Toolkit
• Integration of Hibernate Search
• Introduction of JBoss EL, an extension to the Unified EL of Java EE 5
• Major enhancements to Seam Asynchronicity, including Quartz integration
• Major enhancements to jBPM integration
• Completely reorganized packaging of built-in components
• Migration to JSF 1.2
• Simplified configuration
• Support for pageflow composition
• Enhancements to the integration testing framework
• New transaction abstraction layer with support for non-JTA environments
• Enhanced JavaDoc
• Two new example applications
• Migration to the new Embedded JBoss
• Seam JSF controls reimplemented using Ajax4JSF CDK
• Many, many bugfixes