It was my observation that this was largely true in the '90s. Has anything changed? DB2 get MVCC? SQL Server did for the 2005 version.

Are people buying Oracle RAC or IBM's equivalent offering? How much do IBM's higher end offerings require running them on their mainframes, which continue to be more and more alien to the IT workforce?

I'm not following this closely, but I don't get the impression that IBM is catching up.

IBM is busy playing defense, trying to extract as much money from legacy customers for as long as possible, not playing offense and trying to win new customers away from rivals.

they won't implement anything until convinced that they will lose customers and their fat maintenance contracts doing so. Until then, a dollar spent playing golf will do far more to retain customers than a dollar spent implementing features.

Reg, I always value your opinion, but I'm afraid that's an outdated perception of IBM - or a limited one at the very least. IBM is a huge organization, and while some departments may be more conservative than others, there is plenty of innovation happening every day at the labs.

Each release of DB2 keeps innovating and adding useful features. Often these are not in response to something else that's already available on the market (aka, competition), but rather to what our customers will find beneficial (pureXML is a prime example of this).

If you think about it, the very existence of a free edition doesn't quite fit in with the picture you painted. I assure you that IBM is interested in acquiring new customers as much as keeping large, existing ones. How do I know? I'm paid to focus on the former.

Hmmm, yes, the fate of products in a services company is iffy at best and generally dire (been there, done that).

I agree, total FUD. Oracle also claims to have invented relational databases, also total bullshit.

This book:

http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Between-God-Larry-Ellison/d...

...told me everything I needed to know about Larry Ellison, and the history of Oracle...

The list of Oracle claimed firsts is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database#List_of_claimed...

I don't see them claiming to have invented relational databases. Do you have a reference for that claim?

I do, but I'd have to dig it out. In one of the earlier versions of Oracle than ran on Windows 95 (arguably the last decent one :), one got a set of manuals with it, one of which was titled something like "Concepts and..." It was in there.