The Spring Batch 4.0 release has three major themes: Java 8 Requirement Dependencies re-baseline Builders for ItemReaders and ItemWriters

Spring Batch has historically followed Spring Framework's baselines for both java version as well as third party dependencies. With Spring Batch 4, the Spring Framework version is being upgraded to Spring Framework 5. As such, the java version requirement for Spring Batch is also increasing to Java 8.

In order to continue to integrate with supported versions of the third party libraries Spring Batch utilizes, Spring Batch 4 is updating the dependencies across the board. The new dependency versions are in alignment with Spring Framework 5.

Spring Batch 4 is providing a collection of builders for all of the ItemReaders and ItemWriters that come with the framework. As of this release, builders for the FlatFileItemReader, FlatFileItemWriter, JdbcCursorItemReader, and JdbcBatchItemWriter are available. More information can be found in the javadoc for Spring Batch.