Oracle's been beating the ground to tout the thing, but won't say when any other operating systems models are due.

The widgetry is supposed to include 400 new features, stuff like new compression technology that will triple the amount of data users can store, caching data away in lockboxes, having more facility with unstructured data, being able to change IT environments quickly, and faster testing and deployment of new applications.

According to a survey done by Oracle's user group, 35% of its installed base is supposed to upgrade year one; 53% say they'll wait years.

A lot of its user base won't have to pay for the new features, merely upgrade. Those that do have to pay will have to wait a few more weeks to see what the bill's going to be like. No pricing yet either but it should be like the four-year-old 10g and there are of course discounts.

Oracle controls something like 44% of the supposedly saturated database market, but is only growing at 15% whereas Microsoft with 17% is growing at 25% according to IDC. IBM is in the middle.