diff --git a/docker/constraints.in b/docker/constraints.in
index 60416c23fd..ffb015b5c5 100644
--- a/docker/constraints.in
+++ b/docker/constraints.in
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ sphinx_autodoc_typehints
 sphinx_rtd_theme
 sqlalchemy<2.0
 toolz
-xarray>=0.18
+xarray>=0.9
 
 # Previous pins were to very old versions
 # pytest Py3.10 requires >6.2.5
diff --git a/docs/about/whats_new.rst b/docs/about/whats_new.rst
index a8abc7c759..5aa569f59b 100644
--- a/docs/about/whats_new.rst
+++ b/docs/about/whats_new.rst
@@ -8,12 +8,16 @@ What's New
 v1.8.next
 =========
 
+v1.8.12 (7th March 2023)
+========================
+
 - Rename Geometry `type` attribute to `geom_type`, to align with Shapely 2.0 (:pull:`1402`)
 - Remove some deprecated SQLAlchemy usages (:pull:`1403`, :pull:`1407`)
 - Fix RTD docs build (:pull:`1399`)
 - Minor Documentation fixes (:pull:`1409`, :pull:`1413`)
 - Bug-fix and code cleanup in virtual products (:pull:`1410`)
 - Reduce transaction isolation level to improve database write concurrency (:pull:`1414`)
+- Update dependency versions and whats_new.rst for release (:pull:`1415`)
 
 
 v1.8.11 (6 February 2023)
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 4ef96f7173..3d53532bc3 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@
         'pyyaml',
         'rasterio>=1.3.2',  # Warping broken in 1.3.0 and 1.3.1
         'ruamel.yaml',
-        'sqlalchemy>=1.4,<2.0',  # GeoAlchemy2 requires >=1.4  postgres driver implementation is not 2.0 compatible.
+        'sqlalchemy>=1.4,<2.0',  # GeoAlchemy2 requires >=1.4.  SqlAlchemy2 *may* work but has not been tested yet.
         'GeoAlchemy2',
         'toolz',
         'xarray>=0.9',  # >0.9 fixes most problems with `crs` attributes being lost