Oracle has announced the availability of the first release candidate of MySQL 8.0, which focuses on making MySQL better for modern apps. The new release was announced in a MySQL team blog post by Morgan Tocker.
The 8.0 also marks a departure from the 5.x numbering series, which has been used since 2005. Skipping 6.x and 7.x was intentional to avoid confusion with a previous alpha release and MySQL Cluster, and also to communicate the depth of some of the core changes, writes Tocker.