Recommendations for learning Java web services for Flex

I am a flex dev that is wanting to learn the Java services side of things. I am wanting to use Spring, BlazeDS, and Hibernate in an application I am writing now. I have written a couple simple Java applications but have never written a service, used Spring, or BlazeDS. Where do you recommend I get started? How should I learn and what resources do you rec开发者_运维百科ommend for accomplishing this?

I've put together a list of resources for exactly this:
http://www.jamesward.com/flex-and-java-resources/

Also check out a Refcard that I co-authored on Spring, BlazeDS and Flex integration: http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/flex-4-and-spring-3

As for a RIA you will most likely use your spring backend as a data service. The book Spring Persistence with Hibernate (link text) introduces you to spring and hibernate and then shows you how to build your persistence layer (Domain model, DAO, transactions, caching...). An important point is that it is very recent so it covers Spring 3, Hibernate 3.5 and JPA 2.0 (new Criteria API).

Spring BlazeDS integration project to connect your flex app with a Spring backend through BlazeDS (link text).

From the BlazeDS developer guide, the data serialization section is helpful to understand how data is serializated between java and actionscript (link text).