vaadin + Spring-JDBC howto

hello vaadin-ers,

currently I am using plain old JDBC in my vaadin application , but now I would like to use Spring-JDBC to simplify my job

my question is how to do that?

I am using:

eclipse 3.7 with the vaadin and m2eclipse plugins installed

My current project was reated with the vaadin plugin.

What would be the best way to add spring-JDBC to this project?

- should I convert my current project to a maven project then add spring jdbc as a maven dependency ? how can I convert my vaadin project into a maven project within eclipse?
- or it is better to start a new whatever eclipse project with my current source files ?
- I also installed STS ( springsource toolsuite) should I move my current eclipse project to STS?
- the spring jdbc templeate class constructor needs a datasource how can I create and configure this datasource class ?
- and in general is there an official way / best practice for using vaadin and spring together ? ( I would preferably use annotation or xml based configurion in the simplest possible way )

Thanks for your help and suggestions