Bringing a bit of the “luck of the Irish” just before St. Patrick’s Day, Lithium Project Manager gwoo has announced the release of Lithium 0.7.  This release incorporates some 170 commits from 6 different developers.

This release of Lithium has a strong focus on incorporating SQL support.  As gwoo mentions in the announcement, the Lithium team from the beginning has placed a high level of importance on document-oriented database support.  However, with this latest release, they acknowledge the value that traditional (read: SQL) databases bring to the table.

At the moment, the only database that passes the integration test is MySQL, but the foundation has been laid for support of other databases, including SQLite3, PostgreSQL, and others.  In addition, work is progressing on an MSSQL plugin, and you’re encouraged to lend assistance to that area if you can.

Further additions present in Lithium 0.7 are available for your perusal in the changelog, and include significant work on g11n, a strategy implementation for Adaptable classes, and a lot more.

Keep in mind that several changes made in 0.7 are incompatible with earlier releases.

If you’re interested in Lithium and would like to learn more, you can view a two-hour presentation on PHP 5 and Lithium, complete with audio.

Lithium appears to be on track for a stable release by summer 2010, as noted in the announcement.

If you’d like to download Lithium, you can do so from their Versions page, or use Git to clone a copy, as detailed in the installation instructions on Lithium’s site.