title: Spring 3.0: Unable to locate Spring NamespaceHandler for XML schema namespace
body: <p>My setup is fairly simple: I have a web front-end, back-end is spring-wired.</p>
  
  <p>I am using AOP to add a layer of security on my rpc services.</p>
  
  <p>It's all good, except for the fact that the web app aborts on launch:</p>
  
  <pre>
    [java] SEVERE: Context initialization failed
       [java] org.springframework.beans.factory.parsing.BeanDefinitionParsingException: Configuration problem: Unable to locate Spring NamespaceHandler for XML schema namespace [http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop]
       [java] Offending resource: ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/gwthandler-servlet.xml]
  </pre>
  
  <p>Here is the snippet from my xml config file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop.xsd"&gt;
      &lt;aop:config&gt;
          &lt;aop:aspect id="security" ref="securityAspect" &gt;
              &lt;aop:pointcut id="securedServices" expression="@annotation(com.fb.boog.common.aspects.Secured)"/&gt;
              &lt;aop:before method="checkSecurity" pointcut-ref="securedServices"/&gt;
          &lt;/aop:aspect&gt;
      &lt;/aop:config&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I read over the internets that it may be my classloading the core of the problem. Doubtful, since here is my WEB-INF/lib directory:</p>
  
  <pre><code>./WEB-INF/lib
  ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-alpha1.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/aspectj-1.6.6.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/ehcache-core-1.7.0.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/ejb3-persistence.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/antlr.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/asm.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/bsh-2.0b1.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/cglib.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/dom4j.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/freemarker.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/hibernate-annotations.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/hibernate-shards.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/hibernate-tools.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/hibernate.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate/jtidy-r8-20060801.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/jabsorb
  ./WEB-INF/lib/jabsorb/jabsorb-1.3.1.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/jta.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/jyaml-1.3.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/postgresql-8.4-701.jdbc4.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/sjsxp.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.aop-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.asm-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.aspects-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.beans-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.context-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.context.support-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.core-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.expression-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.instrument-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.instrument.tomcat-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.jdbc-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.jms-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.orm-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.oxm-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.test-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.transaction-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.web-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.web.portlet-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.web.servlet-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/spring/org.springframework.web.struts-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar
  ./WEB-INF/lib/testng-5.11-jdk15.jar
  ./WEB-INF/web.xml
  </code></pre>