This preview release showcases many of the new features that will be available in the upcoming stable release:

• Zend_Rest_Route, Zend_Rest_Controller, and Zend_Controller_Plugin_PutHandler, which aid in providing RESTful resources via the MVC layer.
• Zend_Feed_Reader, which provides a common API to RSS and Atom feeds, as well as extensions to each format, caching, and a slew of other functionality.
• Zend_Queue and Zend_Service_Amazon_Sqs, which provide the ability to use local and remote messaging and queue services for offloading asynchronous processes.
• Zend_Db_Table updates to allow using Zend_Db_Table as a concrete class by passing it one or more table definitions via the constructor.
• Annotation processing support for Zend_Pdf, as well as performance improvements.
• Zend_Dojo custom build layer support.
• Numerous Zend_Ldap improvements.
• Zend_Log_Writer_Syslog, a Zend_Log writer for writing to your system log.
• Several new view helpers, including Zend_View_Helper_BaseUrl.

The 1.9.0 release is shaping up quickly, and we expect to launch a beta late next week, with a stable release a week or so later.

Again, this is a preview release; do not use it in production environments. Do, however, test it thoroughly and let us know what is and is not working for you so we can deliver a solid release with 1.9.0