http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/10/30/aspire.html

Aspire.jar is a free, open source .jar file that can be used for declarative data access, configuration, logging and factory services needs. For Java developers who are continuing to adopt Tomcat as their primary development platform, this .jar file could save lot of time, while providing a highly-flexible data architecture. Oct. 30, 2002