# SQLAlchemy 0.7 Documentation

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Release: 0.7.10 | Release Date: February 7, 2013

# Glossary

Note

The Glossary is a brand new addition to the documentation. While sparse at the moment we hope to fill it up with plenty of new terms soon!

release
releases
released

  This term refers to when an operation terminates some state which corresponds to a service of some kind. Specifically within SQLAlchemy, it usually refers to a reference to a database connection, and typically a transaction associated with that connection. When we say “the operation releases transactional resources”, it means basically that we have a `Connection` object and we are calling the `Connection.close()` method, which has the effect of the underlying DBAPI connection being returned to the connection pool. The connection pool, when it receives a connection for return, unconditionally calls the `rollback()` method of the DBAPI connection, so that any locks or data snapshots within that connection are removed. Then, the connection is either stored locally in memory, still connected but not in a transaction, for subsequent reuse by another operation, or it is closed immediately, depending on the configuration and current state of the connection pool.

  See also

  Connection Pooling