opinions on oracle or IBM training....

hello people,
I'm about to start embarking on training for dba. At first I was going to go with oracle but now i'm starting to wonder about IBM. Which oracle product is better to get certified on? I've seen a lot of 8i stuff....but what about the 9i or even 11i? What's the difference?? How long will 8i last for??
Oracle also said they are coming out with an improved version that doesn't need as much maintenance on it so as to cut costs of ownership.....which one is that??
Now IBM.....how do the oracle products stack up against the DB2 from IBM? From recent news, IBM seems to go more with the cross-platform/work with partner approach that seems to be a better business strategy from what several news sources have said compared to oracle which is a more closed approach. Is this true?? What do real-world professionals have to say about this?? How do you people feel about this? I'm going to invest a lot of time and energy into this so I really want to be sure I've made a good decision.
What about doing both?? Are they really that different?? Is it like saying MS compared to a unix/linux machine??
Sorry for all the questions..........but I really want to know !

Oskar Received on Tue May 22 2001 - 21:52:36 CDT