Database Upgrade/Migration Dilemma

I just had an interesting and disturbing discussion with damagement and wanted to run this by the DBA Gods that read this list.  

We are planning to migrate out production environment from Oracle 8i
(8.1.6) on AIX to Oracle 10g (10.2) on Linux. My current plant is to do
the data moves (about 150 tables) as CTAS via database links. (are there better options? exp/imp won't go back that far) The biggest kicker came in this afternoon - our Java head wants to do the migration with the application up and accessible.  

This just seems to me to be courting disaster. My suggestion was to take everything down, back up the entire environment and then do the moves prior to repointing the applications and bringing them up.  

Another kicker is they don't want to test prior to pulling the trigger.  The worst thing is they made the decision while I was out of town @ OOW.   Should I get my resume' ready?  

Thank you for any insights you may have.  

Rick Weiss
Oracle Database Administrator  

Student Assistance Foundation
P.O.Box 203101
2500 Broadway
Helena, MT 59620-3101  

rweiss_at_safmt.org
(406) 495-7356

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