The RDBMS market grew about 12% in 2007, with Oracle once again emerging as the market’s top vendor.

According to the “Worldwide RDBMS 2007 Vendor Shares” report that IDC released last week, Oracle not only increased its share of the market to 44%, but this 13% growth outpaced that of the overall market. A fact Charles Philips was eager to point out recently at Collaborate.

What factors influenced these increases, both for Oracle and the market as a whole?

According to IDC, much of Oracle’s growth was due to these reasons: the sale of options for Oracle database (i.e. RAC, Audit Vault and Database Vault), and the “unusually high early adoption rates” for the recently released Oracle 11g.

Four vendors besides Oracle dominate the market: Microsoft (who lost share this year), IBM, Teradata and Sybase. IDC attributes their overall growth to increasing competition for the midmarket segment and increased emphasis on security, data compression, and features that “offer greater flexibility and manageability in deployment.”

The IDC also predicts long-term market growth for the future. They see an increase in competition between medium-sized businesses and say that “capabilities such as Web service support, XML data support, and support for blended management of unstructured and structured data should give vendors of such capabilities a competitive advantage.”

Does Oracle deserve the top spot? Does it even matter anymore or are the database wars over?