"After many months of work, we're proud to announce the release today of Django 1.2. There's so much cool stuff packed into it that even a summary can't do it justice; you'll just have to go read the release notes to see it all, then swing by the downloads page to grab a copy. And as always, signed checksums for the release package are available."

Django 1.2 introduces several large, important new features, including:

• Support for multiple database connections in a single Django instance.
• Model validation inspired by Django’s form validation.
• Vastly improved protection against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF).
• A new user “messages” framework with support for cookie- and session-based message for both anonymous and authenticated users.
• Hooks for object-level permissions, permissions for anonymous users, and more flexible username requirements.
• Customization of e-mail sending via e-mail backends.
• New “smart” if template tag which supports comparison operators.