Spring 3.x FactoryBean

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/beans.html

When you need to ask a container for an actual FactoryBean instance itself, not the bean it produces, you preface the bean id with the ampersand symbol& (without quotes) when calling the getBean() method of the ApplicationContext. So for a given FactoryBean with an id of myBean, invokinggetBean("myBean") on the container returns the product of the FactoryBean, and invoking getBean("&myBean") returns the FactoryBean instance itself.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2830337/spring-factorybean-and-scopes-working-together

<bean class="x.y.z.TestFactoryBean" name="testFactory">
<bean class="x.y.z.TestBean" factory-bean="testFactory" 
      factory-method="getObject" scope="test" />