This post is merely meant as a starting guide to tinkering for a light-weight solution to handing off execution of a task for async processing without the overhead of Spring Batch or Spring JMS and Message Brokers, among other middleware solutions.

1. I have a simplistic junit test that merely kicks off the service method to view the path of execution:

/**
 * TaskTests
 *
 * @author Helena Edelson
 * @since v 1.0
 */
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration({"classpath:infrastructure-context.xml"})
public class TaskTests extends BaseTest {
    protected static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(TaskTests.class);
    @Autowired private OrderService orderService;

    @Test
    public void testExecution(){
        logger.debug("Starting execution thread...");
        orderService.dispatch(new Order());
    }
}

2. A simple context config:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<beans xmlns=”http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans”
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xmlns:context=”http://www.springframework.org/schema/context”
xmlns:task=”http://www.springframework.org/schema/task”
xmlns:aop=”http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop”
xmlns:p=”http://www.springframework.org/schema/p”
xsi:schemaLocation=”
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/task http://www.springframework.org/schema/task/spring-task-3.0.xsd”>

<bean id=”taskExecutor” class=”org.springframework.scheduling.concurrent.ThreadPoolTaskExecutor” p:corePoolSize=”5″ p:maxPoolSize=”25″/>

<!– OR alternately: Creates a org.springframework.scheduling.concurrent.ThreadPoolTaskExecutor –>
<task:executor id=”taskExecutor” pool-size=”5-25″ queue-capacity=”100″ rejection-policy=”CALLER_RUNS”/>

</beans>

3. OrderService that delegates to the ThreadPoolTaskExecutor:

/**
 * OrderServiceImpl is used for both orders and returns
 *
 * @author Helena Edelson
 * @MessageEndpoint which is a @Component
 * @since Dec 29, 2009
 */
@Service("orderService")
public class OrderServiceImpl implements OrderService {
    private OrderDao orderDao;
    private MerchantService merchantService;
    private ReceivingService receivingService;
    @Autowired private TaskExecutor taskExecutor;

    @Autowired
    public OrderServiceImpl(OrderDao orderDao, ReceivingService receivingService, MerchantService merchantService) {
        this.orderDao = orderDao;
        this.receivingService = receivingService;
        this.merchantService = merchantService;
    }

    public final void dispatch(final Order order) {
        logger.debug("Starting dispatch execution...");

        if (this.taskExecutor != null) {
            this.taskExecutor.execute(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    executorAsync(order);
                }
            });
        }

        logger.debug("Completed dispatch execution...");
    }

    private final void executorAsync(final Order order) {
        logger.debug("Starting Async execution...");

        daoDatasourceOne.createOrder(order);
        daoDatasourceTwo.createOrder(order);

        logger.debug("Completed Async execution...");
    }

/* Where the output will be: Note the dispatch method returns control to its caller before the async method begins:
2010-01-27 13:23:27,546 [main] DEBUG org.springsource.oms.infrastructure.TaskTests  - Starting execution thread...
2010-01-27 13:23:27,546 [main] DEBUG org.springsource.oms.domain.services.OrderServiceImpl  - Starting dispatch execution...
2010-01-27 13:23:27,546 [main] DEBUG org.springsource.oms.domain.services.OrderServiceImpl  - Completed dispatch execution...
2010-01-27 13:23:27,546 [taskExecutor-1] DEBUG org.springsource.oms.domain.services.OrderServiceImpl  - Starting Async execution...
persisting org.springsource.oms.domain.entities.Order@1f10a67
*/

/**
* Alternately for a different scenario you can play around with this:
*/
public void withExecutor(final Order order) {
        try {
            CompletionService