EAP deployment stalls and throws warning when validating beans.xml

Issue

• We have a war file, which has our web service, as part of the ear file, and the deployment hangs on parsing the beans.xml as shown below in my server.log:

        11:56:03,408 DEBUG [org.jboss.weld] (MSC service thread 1-8) Found beans.xml: "/content/example-ear.ear/example.war/WEB-INF/beans.xml"
        ...
        11:59:13,230 WARN  [org.jboss.weld.Bootstrap] (MSC service thread 1-8) WELD-001208 Warning when validating vfs:/content/example-ear.ear/example.war/WEB-INF/beans.xml@7 against xsd. schema_reference.4: Failed to read schema document 'http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd', because 1) could not find the document; 2) the document could not be read; 3) the root element of the document is not <xsd:schema>.

• Our application deployment slows down significantly validating its beans.xml; the thread dump shows the following:

"MSC service thread 1-2" prio=10 tid=0x0000000008533800 nid=0x5f2 runnable [0x00002b43ff56f000]
   java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
    at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.doConnect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:339)
    - locked <0x00000000f753ed98> (a java.net.SocksSocketImpl)
    at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:200)
    at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:182)
    at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:391)
    at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:579)
    at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:528)
    at sun.net.NetworkClient.doConnect(NetworkClient.java:180)
    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:378)
    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:473)
    - locked <0x00000000f753ed10> (a sun.net.www.http.HttpClient)
    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.<init>(HttpClient.java:203)
    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(HttpClient.java:290)
    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(HttpClient.java:306)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getNewHttpClient(HttpURLConnection.java:995)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.plainConnect(HttpURLConnection.java:931)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.connect(HttpURLConnection.java:849)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1299)
    - locked <0x00000000f753e328> (a sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.setupCurrentEntity(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLVersionDetector.determineDocVersion(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.opti.SchemaParsingConfig.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.opti.SchemaParsingConfig.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.opti.SchemaDOMParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.traversers.XSDHandler.getSchemaDocument(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.traversers.XSDHandler.parseSchema(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaLoader.loadSchema(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.findSchemaGrammar(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.handleStartElement(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.emptyElement(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.jboss.as.weld.deployment.BeansXmlParser.parse(BeansXmlParser.java:95)
    at org.jboss.as.weld.deployment.processors.BeansXmlProcessor.parseBeansXml(BeansXmlProcessor.java:134)
    at org.jboss.as.weld.deployment.processors.BeansXmlProcessor.deploy(BeansXmlProcessor.java:98)
    at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.DeploymentUnitPhaseService.start(DeploymentUnitPhaseService.java:116)
    - locked <0x00000000e0872930> (a org.jboss.as.server.deployment.DeploymentUnitPhaseService)
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.startService(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1811)
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1746)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)