Announcing Vitess 17

Vitess v17 introduces a new virtual machine-based SQL evaluation engine (not enabled by default) that offers over 2x performance improvement compared to the AST-based engine. It also enhances MySQL compatibility with support for `Prepare`, `Execute`, `Deallocate` statements and numerous functions. Replication enhancements include support for `noblob` binlog_row_image and MySQL 8.0 transaction compression, which can significantly reduce binary log size and I/O. Usability improvements include transaction throttling in autocommit mode and faster dead primary recoveries in VTOrc.