I am pleased to announce the first beta release of ZODB3, formerly known as StandaloneZODB. ZODB is an object database for Python that provides transactional persistence while requiring few, if any, changes to application logic. You can get a source release from http://www.zope.org/Products/StandaloneZODB Windows users will need a compiler to build C extensions. I'd be happy to accept a binary installer for Windows, if a user is willing to contribute it. The components you get with the ZODB3 release are as follows: - Core ZODB, including the persistence machinery - Standard storages such as FileStorage - Supporting modules such as ExtensionClass - The persistent BTrees modules - ZEO - Experimental Berkeley storages - Some documentation <wink> The beta release contains roughly the same version of ZODB that will be included in Zope 2.6. The two releases are not directly coordinated, so there may be some subtle differences. Many people have contributed to ZODB3. Special thanks to Toby Dickenson for the new ZODB Connection cache. Many people at Zope Corp. have contributed code and tested unreleased versions. The NEWS.txt file contains a list of the major changes since the StandaloneZODB 1.0 release in February. You can also find this list at http://www.zope.org/Products/StandaloneZODB/NEWS Jeremy