Per the link below both INNODB and the new Sun developed Falcon are MVCC. If Oracle wants to beat IBM then Oracle needs to find out why IBM is always selling hardware divisions and aggressively adding software assets like separate Dimension modeling BI team in Cognos and Prediction modeling team in SSPS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiversion_concurrency_control
😉
Yeah, I know. As I've already posted, brain cramp. IBM keeps buying various "service" companies because, like the banks and insurance companies, they think that return on real capital is higher when you don't have to actually have physical assets. That only goes so far. And they, mostly, depend on the z/390/370/360 platform. If Larry can best the platform, he wins both hardware and software battles. Oracle has already demonstrated that the MVCC database wins. All except DB2 (modulo 9.7, sort of) now do MVCC.
I remain convinced that Larry's goal is to replace the IBM mainframe platform. Do that, and he wins the software battle too, by default. He thinks big, and this is a Big Strategy. It's not a tactic. Java is a tactic.