My question seems realitively simple yet I have been unable to find much documentation on the topic. I am not a database expert by trade and find myself doing more and more application support. I have several hundred clients running 8i databases that, over the course of the last year, have budgeted for new server equipment. Most of these clients will be upgrading to Oracle 9i because of the performance benefits and because it monitors resources better than 8i.

My question is this, sure there are plenty of reasons to run 9i over 8i database... but what reasons are there to upgrade all the thousands of workstations from 8i to 9i client other than the obvious of keeping everything on the same platform? What are the pros and cons? Any documentation on this topic would be quite helpful... particullarly from seasoned DBA's. Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts.