persistence of JSON values in MySQL as well as basic operator support
of "getitem" and "getpath", making use of the ``JSON_EXTRACT``
function in order to refer to individual paths in a JSON structure.
fixes #3547
- Added a new type to core :class:`.types.JSON`.  This is the
base of the PostgreSQL :class:`.postgresql.JSON` type as well as that
of the new :class:`.mysql.JSON` type, so that a PG/MySQL-agnostic
JSON column may be used.  The type features basic index and path
searching support.
fixes #3619
- reorganization of migration docs etc. to try to refer both to
the fixes to JSON that helps Postgresql while at the same time
indicating these are new features of the new base JSON type.
- a rework of the Array/Indexable system some more, moving things
that are specific to Array out of Indexable.
- new operators for JSON indexing added to core so that these can
be compiled by the PG and MySQL dialects individually
- rename sqltypes.Array to sqltypes.ARRAY - as there is no generic
Array implementation, this is an uppercase type for now, consistent
with the new sqltypes.JSON type that is also not a generic implementation.
There may need to be some convention change to handle the case of
datatypes that aren't generic, rely upon DB-native implementations,
but aren't necessarily all named the same thing.

``<function> WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY <criteria>)``, using the
method :class:`.FunctionElement.within_group`.  A series of common
set-aggregate functions with return types derived from the set have
been added. This includes functions like :class:`.percentile_cont`,
:class:`.dense_rank` and others.
fixes #1370
- make sure we use func.name for all _literal_as_binds in functions.py
so we get consistent naming behavior for parameters.

which automatically returns an :class:`.Array` of the correct type
and supports index / slice operations.   As arrays are only
supported on Postgresql at the moment, only actually works on
Postgresql. fixes #3132

of :class:`.FunctionElement` or other column element that incorrectly
states 'None' or any other invalid object as the ``.type``
attribute will report this exception instead of recursion overflow.
fixes #3485

constructs are now importable from the "from sqlalchemy" namespace,
just like every other Core construct.
- The implicit conversion of strings to :func:`.text` constructs
when passed to most builder methods of :func:`.select` as
well as :class:`.Query` now emits a warning with just the
plain string sent.   The textual conversion still proceeds normally,
however.  The only method that accepts a string without a warning
are the "label reference" methods like order_by(), group_by();
these functions will now at compile time attempt to resolve a single
string argument to a column or label expression present in the
selectable; if none is located, the expression still renders, but
you get the warning again. The rationale here is that the implicit
conversion from string to text is more unexpected than not these days,
and it is better that the user send more direction to the Core / ORM
when passing a raw string as to what direction should be taken.
Core/ORM tutorials have been updated to go more in depth as to how text
is handled.
fixes #2992

e.g. the ``func`` construct.  Previously, behavior for this method
was undefined.  The current behavior mimics that of pre-0.9.4,
which is that the function is turned into a single-column FROM
clause with the given alias name, where the column itself is
anonymously named.
fixes #3137

- apply autopep8 + manual fixes to most of test/sql/

Found using: https://github.com/intgr/topy

is currently being supported in addition to nose, and will likely
be preferred to nose going forward.   The nose plugin system used
by SQLAlchemy has been split out so that it works under pytest as
well.  There are no plans to drop support for nose at the moment
and we hope that the test suite itself can continue to remain as
agnostic of testing platform as possible.  See the file
README.unittests.rst for updated information on running tests
with pytest.

The test plugin system has also been enhanced to support running
tests against mutiple database URLs at once, by specifying the ``--db``
and/or ``--dburi`` flags multiple times.  This does not run the entire test
suite for each database, but instead allows test cases that are specific
to certain backends make use of that backend as the test is run.
When using pytest as the test runner, the system will also run
specific test suites multiple times, once for each database, particularly
those tests within the "dialect suite".   The plan is that the enhanced
system will also be used by Alembic, and allow Alembic to run
migration operation tests against multiple backends in one run, including
third-party backends not included within Alembic itself.
Third party dialects and extensions are also encouraged to standardize
on SQLAlchemy's test suite as a basis; see the file README.dialects.rst
for background on building out from SQLAlchemy's test platform.