So the first news from Version 10.0 of MapInfo Professional is coming out and I think it is really exciting. MapInfo will natively support the PostGIS Spatial Database.
For those of you not familiar with POSTGis, it is a spatial database extension for PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). It is released under a BSD-style license and is thus free software. As with many other open-source programs, PostgreSQL is not controlled by any single company, but has a global community of developers and companies to develop it.
You can think of PostgreSQL/POSTGIS combination as an open source alternative to Oracle with the Spatial Extension. You get an enterprise RDBMS solution free of charge with an excellent community that are happy to help. It is the favoured RDBMS of the open source geo community and our friends in openstreetmap recently switched their backend to POSTGis.
It is great to see MapInfo embrace the open source community long may it continue
For more information check out http://li.pbbiblogs.com/2009/04/28/mapinfo-professional-v100-support-for-postgis/