The MariaDB project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of MariaDB 5.5.20-alpha. MariaDB 5.5.20 is the first Alpha release in the 5.5 series. We hope to follow it up soon with a beta 5.5 release. MariaDB 5.5.20-alpha is a merge of MariaDB 5.3 and MySQL 5.5 with some limited additional bug fixes. This is the first 5.5-based release, and we are releasing it now, intentionally without any extra features, and with it missing some planned features, to get it into the hands of any who might want to test it. Extra features planned for MariaDB 5.5 will be pushed into subsequent releases. **Do not use alpha releases on production systems.** == MariaDB 5.5.20-alpha Release Notes, Changelog, Downloads =========== The release notes for MariaDB 5.5.20-alpha are available at: http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-5520-release-notes A changelog for this release is available at: http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-5520-changelog Sources, binaries and packages can be downloaded from: http://downloads.askmonty.org/mariadb/5.5.20/ Debian and Ubuntu packages are available from our mirrored apt repositories. A sources.list generator can be found at: http://downloads.askmonty.org/mariadb/repositories/ == About MariaDB 5.5 ================================================== The MariaDB 5.5 series is the combination of MariaDB 5.3 and MySQL 5.5. Please read the "What is MariaDB 5.5" page for details: http://kb.askmonty.org/en/what-is-mariadb-55 == SkySQL and MariaDB: Solutions Day ================================== We'll be co-hosting the the "SkySQL & MariaDB: Solutions Day for the MySQL® Database" one day event on 13 April, 2012, at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. During this event, attendees will receive free, hands-on training and consulting on MariaDB and MySQL® database solutions from the experts at SkySQL, MariaDB, Continuent, ScaleDB, Severalnines, Sphinx, and Webyog, among others. SkySQL and MariaDB will bring together industry visionaries, including Michael (Monty) Widenius and David Axmark, the original authors of the MySQL database, to share their insights on current and future trends pertaining to the world's most popular open source database. To learn more about this free event, visit http://www.skysql.com/events/mysql-solutions-day The schedule for the event is here: http://www.skysql.com/events/mysql-solutions-day/schedule Attendees are also invited to participate in Drizzle Day– a parallel event co-hosted by SkySQL, Percona, and the Drizzle Development Team, featuring tutorials on the Drizzle database. == User Feedback plugin =============================================== MariaDB includes a User Feedback plugin. This plugin is disabled by default. If enabled, it submits basic, completely anonymous MariaDB usage information. This information is used by the developers to track trends in MariaDB usage to better guide development efforts. If you would like to help make MariaDB better, please add --plugin-load=feedback.so to your my.cnf file! On Windows, add "feedback=ON" to your my.ini file, or click the checkbox during the installation of the MSI package. See http://kb.askmonty.org/en/user-feedback-plugin for more information. == MariaDB Crash Course book ========================================== We would also like to mention the book "MariaDB Crash Course", by Ben Forta. This book - for beginner to intermediate level users - will get you up and running with MariaDB, even if you've never used a database before. More information is available at: http://forta.com/books/0321799941/ == Quality ============================================================ The project always strives for quality, but in reality, nothing is perfect. Please take time to report any issues you encounter at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/maria We hope you enjoy MariaDB! -- Daniel Bartholomew MariaDB - http://mariadb.org Monty Program - http://montyprogram.com AskMonty Knowledgebase - http://kb.askmonty.org