This 1.9 series pre-release of OWS represents a major step forward on the road to an official 1.9.0 Open Data Cube release.

More excitingly, pre-release 1.9.0-rc1 is the first pre-release of OWS compatible with Open Data Cube 1.9 (also still in pre-release). This pre-release includes support for both the legacy "postgres" index driver and the new "postgis" index driver. github.com/opendatacube/data…

New releases of Datacube-OWS, the web services layer for the Open Data Cube: The new stable release 1.8.42 includes bug fixes and significant enhancements to custom feature info inclusions. github.com/opendatacube/data…

Version 1.8.41 of Datacube-OWS is now available and includes a new feature: Multi-date handlers for colour ramp styles can now operate on raw band data, enabling many new visual comparison techniques that were not previously supported. github.com/opendatacube/data…

1.8.19 release of the Open Data Cube includes a fix to a bug in COG generation code affecting floating point bands, that adversely affected both ESRI and GDAL handling of ODC-generated floating point COGs. github.com/opendatacube/data…

ODC 1.8.18 is now available. It contains bug-fixes, enhancements and changes to smooth the transition to Open Data Cube 1.9.x. Future development will focus on the 1.9.x series, but 1.8.x maintenance releases will continue for the forseeable future. github.com/opendatacube/data…

Feedback from the community is encouraged - we want to make the transition as smooth as possible for all users and ensure that nobody gets left behind.  You can leave comments here or on the github discussion at github.com/opendatacube/data… 12/12

More details can be found by reading the ODCv2 roadmap and the various Enhancement Proposals at github.com/opendatacube/data…    All of the most significant changes are discussed there in more detail. 11/12

* Support for multi-dimensional loading of hyperspectral datasets 10/12

* The postgis driver supports a powerful new API for working with lineage data, offering more powerful tools for querying lineage information and looser coupling and cleaner separation between lineage and datasets. 9/12

* A new configuration engine. Most existing config files should continue to work as previously, but there are some backwards-incompatible changes. 8/12

* The postgis driver will support spatial indexes for arbitrary CRSs. This will improve efficiency and accuracy of database searches, particularly when working with data for regions like the Pacific around the anti-meridian and the north and south polar regions). 7/12

* The Postgis index driver will only support EO3-compatible metadata types. (The legacy postgres driver will continue to support non-EO3 metadata types until it is dropped in 2.0) 6/12

* The index driver API will be cleaned up and simplified, facilitating easier development of new index backends in future. * A new PostGIS-based index backend. (The legacy Postgres index driver will continue to be supported in 1.9, but will be dropped in ODC-2.0.) 5/12

Here's a brief summary of what to expect from datacube-1.9: * The old datacube.utils.geometry library will be replaced by odc-geo . If you have used odc-geo you will understand how much additional power and flexibility this brings to core. 4/12

We do not yet have an expected release date for 1.9.0 but we are hopeful that it will happen in the first few months of 2024. 3/12

The plan includes several backwards-incompatible changes. An effort has been made to provide a smooth migration pathway wherever possible, but there will be some minor backwards incompatible changes in 1.9.0. 2/12