IBM took almost five years to develop the latest version of DB2 and is betting on an 'explosion' in XML data due to new computing principles such as service-oriented architecture (SOA).

'XML is that next inflection point,' said Pasarelli, adding that XML will grow as much as twice of other data formats. In contrast, IBM's rivals like Oracle Corp. and the Microsoft derive bulk of revenues from relational database.

IBM also added new data compression and security features and optimized the database for SAP application environments.