MySQL 5.0.0, a new version of the popular Open Source/Free Software Database Management System, has been released. It is now available in source and binary form for a number of platforms from our download pages at http://www.mysql.com/downloads/ and mirror sites.

Do to an unfortunate build error in the last minute we can't provide -max binaries for 5.0.0 at this time. Sorry about that.

Note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point in time - if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.

This is the first Alpha development release of the 5.0 tree, adding many new features (see below). As this code is currently labeled "Alpha", we do not recommend that this version be used in production environments yet! It does however pass our test suite on all our build platforms and all old features should be resonable stable.

However, we encourage you to test and evaluate it and, more importantly, report any bugs or observations to our bug tracking database at http://bugs.mysql.com/. Please note, that for us to resolve a bug report, a reproducible test is required. See "How to report a bug" at http://bugs.mysql.com/how-to-report.php for more details before filing a bug report. We appreciate your support!

The most prominent new feature of MySQL 5.0 is probably Basic support for stored procedures (SQL-99 style). However, there are several additional enhancements, which are planned to be implemented before MySQL 5.0 reaches beta status.

Our development plan is to continue to add new features to 5.0 at least until 4.1 reaches 'gamma' status after which we will move new development to 5.1. Our man goal is to have more major releases with shorter time intervals to get out new stable features faster.

THe MySQL 4.1 branch seams to be relatively stable and we will, if we don't find any new unexpected hard bugs that will require a new design decisions, make a beta release of 4.1 in January followed by a gamma release ASAP.