Is it possible to upgrade Oracle 8i to 12c? We have an old server running Oracle 8i. 

Is it going to be possible to directly update it to something newer like Oracle 12c, or would that require a complete uninstall and re-install?

If we had to completely uninstall and re-install, is it then a case of importing the database dump from Oracle 8i and it will be converted, or is that also a manual task?

Update

Thanks for everyones input. I have checked with our application vendor (the ones who originally installed Oracle 8i for us around 10 years ago) and their application that we use does work with Oracle 12c but they are not willing to do the update for us.

They have basically said that we should do the update, preferably on a new server and at that point they would be willing to get involved to check their application out using the new database version etc.

Is there some way to find Oracle experts capable of doing this job (preferably UK based)? I'm pretty new to Oracle (past experience is mainly Microsoft SQL Server), day to day management/security, scripting etc. is ok but I'd rather have someone in who has done this (many times?) before.

Thanks again!
There is no in-place upgrade possible but the existing exp utility is still supported for importing dmp files.

Some of the issues you need to research are:


I have taken an export from an 8i database and imported it into an 11g with no issues. Importing into 12 should not be a problem but planning is everything!
will you use the same character set?  Often organizations start with western only and need to use UTF16 for more compatibility with other languages.
do yourself a favour and do an install on a new machine with new hardware.  12 requires more of everything, memory, hard drive.
many 8i parameters are not supported so you need to establish if there are any custom settings that you need equivalents for


Of course this would need to be tested.