IBM is working hard to keep pace with Oracle, and their latest database solution is specifically targeted at existing Oracle customers. That is, to take Oracle customers. IBM's DB2 9 is soon going to be available, most likely at the end of next month, and will add support for many things that developers and database managers want, such as support for Ruby on Rails, a very popular development framework. Where their big ticket comes from that will possibly attract Oracle users, is DB2 9's ability to handle XML formats in a variety of ways at high speeds. Oracle holds the largest market share for relational databases, and it will be tough for IBM to bring them down.