Oracle said at the time that its benchmark would be released Oct. 14.

Both Oracle and IBM are members of the group, which was "founded to define transaction processing and database benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry," according to its website.

After IBM complained, the TPC found that Oracle's claim "was not supported because Oracle did not have a TPC result at the time of publication," and ordered the ads pulled.

That incident no doubt had an influence on IBM's current campaign against Oracle, which after its acquisition of Sun Microsystems and move into integrated systems, has become IBM's primary competitor.

"IBM is totally ripped at what it sees as Oracle FUD and outright lies in its marketing and sales messages," said Forrester Research analyst John Rymer via e-mail. "I think Oracle is hurting IBM, and now, bloodied, IBM is starting to fight back."