diff --git a/railties/CHANGELOG b/railties/CHANGELOG
index d95b7d80a8..12d56e0ccb 100644
--- a/railties/CHANGELOG
+++ b/railties/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 *SVN*
 
+* Add environment variable RAILS_DEFAULT_DATABASE, which allows the builtin default of 'mysql' to be overridden. [Nicholas Seckar]
+
 * Windows: include MinGW in RUBY_PLATFORM check.  #2982 [okkez000@gmail.com, Kaspar Schiess]
 
 * Split out the basic plugin locator functionality into an abstract super class. Add a FileSystemLocator to do the job of checking the plugin_paths for plugins. Add plugin_locators configuration option which will iterate over the set of plugin locators and load each of the plugin loaders they return. Rename locater everywhere to locator. [Marcel Molina Jr.] 
diff --git a/railties/lib/rails_generator/generators/applications/app/app_generator.rb b/railties/lib/rails_generator/generators/applications/app/app_generator.rb
index 742a56e843..6c93fe14f8 100644
--- a/railties/lib/rails_generator/generators/applications/app/app_generator.rb
+++ b/railties/lib/rails_generator/generators/applications/app/app_generator.rb
@@ -7,7 +7,8 @@ class AppGenerator < Rails::Generator::Base
 
   DATABASES = %w(mysql oracle postgresql sqlite2 sqlite3 frontbase)
 
-  default_options   :db => "mysql", :shebang => DEFAULT_SHEBANG, :freeze => false
+  default_options   :db => (ENV["RAILS_DEFAULT_DATABASE"] || "mysql"),
+    :shebang => DEFAULT_SHEBANG, :freeze => false
   mandatory_options :source => "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../../../../.."
 
   def initialize(runtime_args, runtime_options = {})