Oracle DBA veteran considering getting certification

Congratulations Paula, and thanks for sharing "how I did it". Like you, I believe that today there are still plenty of hiring managers that will count experience far heavier than certification. I just worry that if they are considering someone with equal experience, the OCP might tip their decision. Ironically, those who have been out of work have been in a better position to study for their certification than those of us who have been working steadily.

• Which level of Oracle are you pursuing? Oracle 8i?
• Which test did you take? I have been very pleased with Jason Couchman's "Oracle 8i DBA Practice Exams" from Oracle Press. One thing he points out is that for the experienced DBA, the different modules are definitely of different difficulty levels. Here is my assessment so far:
• SQL and PL/SQL is one of the hardest. You need to know all the SQL functions. Discourages too many experienced DBAs from continuing the certification process, if they were caught napping by this first test.
• Database Administration - the easiest for an experienced DBA. Take this first.
• Tuning - Pretty easy since most of us end up tuning from time to time.
• Backup & Recovery - One of the hardest. Most of us don't spend much time recovering (if we're lucky), but nobody can deny it is a critical function. Of course, I took this one first.
• Net Administration - I don't have a good feel for this one. I don't do much network stuff, so I have a lot to learn.

Someone posted a statement awhile back to the effect: "look at it from the test developer's point of view." Here is what I think the objectives are: 1. Ensure that a client can hire an OCP with reasonable assurance that they are reasonably competent.
2. Test basic competence. Make it difficult enough and practical enough to weed out most of the inexperienced people. 3. Test breadth of knowledge. This trips up most of us experienced people. For example, maybe you've never worked with MTS. An OCP should at least know some basic facts about MTS just so a hiring manager doesn't shake his head in disbelief that he just hired someone that never heard of MTS. On the other hand, Oracle database is very complex and richly featured so you can't expect an OCP to be an expert in every facet. 4. Tie it to the Oracle Education courses. Oracle didn't get where it was by leaving money on the table. If it can get most people to take the courses and most course graduates glide through the exams, then for Oracle it is a win-win.  

You can't make the test so difficult that you get so few certified people that it never gets any mass appeal.
But you can't make it so easy that its value is ridiculed (aside from this list).  

I'll tell you something more ominous. I am a Licensed Professional Engineer (mechanical engineer). This is a really old certification track, that is administered by a national professional engineer's society (wouldn't work here, the professional societies like IEEE aren't strong enough, and Oracle will resist competition, since they sell educational classes). These things tend to vary over time. In the early days, you could simply send in a licensing fee. That is how they grandfathered in all the working professionals, and forestalled a rebellion. Then they instituted an easy test. By the time I came along, the test was a real bear, and you couldn't take it until you had 4 years of experience (4 years to forget). Technically, you could come in off the street, no degree, and pass the test. Unlikely, but theoretically possible. Now, they have accomplished most of their goals and they more certify the school than the engineer. Or they are trying to raise the number of licensed engineers. My apologies for boring most of you, but personally, I find some interesting parallels. We may actually see the certification process get harder now that the wide acceptance seems to be coming.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2002 11:53 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Well,

Given the IT market I felt that it was worth getting certified even though I haven't had any problems and been working with Oracle as DBA for over 8 years. However, I decided that I didn't want to spend a lot of money or time to do it. I have 2 small children, work, - yadayadayada(sp?). I got the self-test for the first test, studied using that and read Mike Ault's Exam cram book from front to back (excellent resource, concise, straightforward, good examples - just a couple of errors in whole book). Total test time was about 30 hours. Took the exam this morning in 60 minutes (120 alloted), got 49 out of 57 questions correct and passed. I really want to thank Mike Ault for the excellent concise Cram book and intend to continue on this same path for the other exams. Unfortunately, Mike didn't write all of them - however, I am hoping they are all of the same level of quality. I haven't taken a course in Oracle (any) for about 5 year and SQL/PLSQL in about 10-12.

Total hours to prepare : 30 hours
Resources: Exam Cram by Mike Ault and self-test exam Any additional costs - none
Didn't want to study on clients time so ended up studying mostly between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. in the morning.

Hope the others go well and can get this done before Oracle changes the criteria.

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Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS
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