OpenSource.com covers the upcoming release of the MySQL 8.
What happened to 6 & 7?
Years ago, before the Sun Microsystems purchase of MySQL AB, there was a version of MySQL with the number 6. Sadly, it was a bit ambitious and the change of ownership left it to wither. The MySQL Cluster product has been using the 7 series for years. With the new changes for MySQL 8, developers feel they have modified it enough to bump the big number.
The new version brings a whole lot of changes to filesystem organization, indexes, faster ALTER TABLE, and more.