upgrading 7.3.4 to ???

Dear all,
we are going to buy a new database server so it's a great occasion for migrate from our old (but good and stable :) Oracle 7.3.4. General question: if you wore my hat, will you move to 8.1.7 or will you jump
directly to 9.0.1?
(Platform availability is not a problem because we have to move from our desupported platform - SCO Openserver - to a new platform so our choice will probably be Linux.)
Specific questions: is 9.0.1 already stable or have I to wait for a higher 9.0.x release? On the other hand, do you think that 8.1.7 will continue to live for a while or do you think that it will be desupported before the end of 2001?
Another important item: assuming that 8.1.7 is able to read 7.3.4 export files, can I make the same assumption for 9i? Otherwise I don't know how to migrate data.

Thanks in advance. Have a nice weekend.
Best wishes, Cristian Veronesi

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Cristian Veronesi ><(((( > http://www.crpa.it

"L'empirismo   una serie di sbagli, e pi  sbagli pi  senti
 che stai crescendo, che vivi." (Luigi Meneghello)