Positive Negative Experiences with Object Extensibility?

A bit of an argument has broken out on our development team as to whether to make use of some of Oracle's object extensibility features. Specifically, whether to use some complicated object views without changing the relational tables. One developer feels it makes his life very easy, because JDeveloper understand the objects and automatically generate a lot of useful methods for them. Others feel the technology is too new and untested, and adds to the learning curve...

Anyone have either a good or a bad (be honest) experience with deciding to use the "new nifty" stuff??

Also, objects have been out since Oracle 8 not 8i, right? Can anyone tell me the original release date for Oracle 8?

• Dc.