The first beta release of the SQLAlchemy 0.8 series, 0.8.0b1, is released for developer evaluation.

0.8 represents the latest series of refinements to the SQLAlchemy Core and ORM libraries and features over 100 individual changes, consisting of major new features, bug fixes, and other enhancements. There are also major refactorings present in both the library and the test suite intended to improve maintainability, performance, and compability with future enhancements and external projects.

The purpose of the beta releases is to give a wide range of developers a chance to evaluate the new version against existing applications, and to alert the SQLAlchemy team of any regressions or major upgrade issues being experienced. Each major release of SQLAlchemy includes a wide array of planned but backwards-incompatible changes, including the removal of deprecated features, as well as bug fixes which change behaviors that some applications may have been relying upon.

Among many changes include improvements to the documentation system. The changelog and migration guides for SQLAlchemy are now integrated with the Sphinx documentation, where they can refer to each other as well as the rest of the SQLAlchemy documentation.

Users should start by reading the What's New in 0.8 document, which introduces major new features as well as areas where applications may experience a behavioral change. The 0.8.0b1 Changelog will enumerate most changes in detail.

Download SQLAlchemy 0.8.0b1 on the download page.