RE: What is truth?

Can't speak about the OCP tests, but a few years back I was asked to take some Oracle tests as part of a screening interview with a head hunter. It was obvious the tests were developed in-house and the person who wrote the tests had been around Oracle just long enough to pick up on many myths, and not long enough to know better. A couple of sample bogus questions follow:

1. A table should never be allowed to exceed how many extents?
2. 1
3. 2
4. 5
5. 10
6. When writing a SQL statement with a sub-query, which (one) of the following is true:
7. Exists should always be used instead of In
8. In should always be used instead of Exists
9. Oracle does not support sub-queries

And there were so many questions similar to those above. So yes, there were quite a few questions where I intentionally gave the "wrong" answer (sometimes hoping I guessed the "correct" wrong answer when *all* the answers were wrong). For example, in question 1 above I said C (5) since it seems like so many scripts out there look for more than 5 extents. In item 2, I answered A since you always run into so many people saying you should always use an EXISTS versus IN. I actually took three tests, DBA, developer (Forms/Reports), and SQL & PL/SQL. I think it was the SQL & PL/SQL test that had 35 questions, and no less than 6 questions (1/6) were on updateable views, key-preserved issues, and which column(s)) could or could not be updated in various scenarios.

Regards,

Larry G. Elkins
elkinsl_at_flash.net
214.954.1781

> -----Original Message-----
> From: root_at_fatcity.com [mailto:root_at_fatcity.com]On Behalf Of Ray Stell
> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 4:38 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: What is truth?
>
>
>
> My boss (one of those scarey-smart people) was taking some
> certification test, when someone mused, "I wonder how many questions he
> will answer 'incorrectly' in order to get a higher score?" This is
> because he knows how it really works unlike those that made up the
> test.
>
> Made me wonder how many misconceptions are ingrained in the
> OCP test stack. Do you know of any?

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Author: Larry Elkins
  INET: elkinsl_at_flash.net

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