The very first version of the Spring WS plugin has been released. This plugin takes the best practice, document-based, contract-first approach to traditional (i.e. SOAP or POX) web service development and aims to make it the easy practice. Highlights include:

• A new 'Endpoint' artefact for providing web services, complete with default conventions for mapping the payload of incoming XML documents to an invoke method.
• A new 'EndpointFunctionalTest' artefact that makes it simple to create functional tests for your endpoints against a full web service stack.
• A Groovier WebServiceTemplate for consuming web services.

Like any 0.1 release, any and all feedback is hugely appreciated.