MongoDB 4.4 is now available in beta, offering "user-driven engineering" with features demanded by the community, including enhancements to the Aggregation Pipeline, improved sharding and scale-out capabilities, increased resilience and security controls, and support for TLS 1.3 encryption. The new release aims to make it easier to build, scale, and secure applications using MongoDB, providing developers with more flexibility in selecting shard keys, minimizing latency, and ensuring data locality. With the beta release, MongoDB Atlas users can try out the new features and get started with the latest version of the database.