Re: Is Oracle DBA cerificate useless ?!!!!

5 Years Experience doesn't prove competence. We have several 'autopilot' database that I 'babysit' just to notify the vendor (I usually do it prior to a failure). The terms of the support contract for the product say I must be available, but I am not permitted to do anything without permission.

They are what I call 'shoe box databases' with a total size of less than 10 gb of data.

I came from a tech support env, but was hired to my current position because I paid oracle corp out of pocket for Instructor Led Training, and pursued the cert as I went through the class.

I got entry level pay, and I was entry level. But I also designed a *major* migration of a 27 gb database. Something Vendor support reccommended to spend four days on. The Senior Oracle DBA with 5+ years experience couldn't come up with a viable solution. They even tried hiring 'consultants' who couldn't come up with a solution.

Here are some details:
Source:
Oracle 7.1
2K Block Size
OS: Vax VMS 6.2 (32 bit platform)

Destination:
Oracle 7.3
8K Block Size
OS: Alpha OpenVMS 7.0 (64 bit platform)

I managed it in 9 hours. At an estimate downtime cost of $16,000 an hour (my bosses number when he interviewed me) I saved my organization more than a million dollars!

My story shows, education and OCP can get you in to an entry level position. Time in service dosn't make a competent dba. (Or other certified professional.) It's all about resources. Identifying, evaluating, making an informed reccommendation, and validating it proof. I was able to significantly elevate my status (and paycheck ) because I used my resources. (Remember RTFM? It works. The migration guides clearly state upgrade options include: 1) migration script, 2) imp and export and 3) sql*net copy. Option 1 was not an option, as the change of block size and os (32 to 64 bit). My peers kept insisting on option 2. I went with option 3!!! )

And after that, I chose to upgrade my resume....

Doug

MarkyG wrote:

> Its not useless as long as you have (or at least doing) real world
> experience to try out the things learned whiclst doing your
> certification.
>
> Look at it this way, if someone picks up your CV, sees OCP DBA and 4
> months work experience, they will probably snigger a bit.
>
> Another person with 5 years DBA experience and not necessarily passed
> or even taken OCP will hold a lot more street cred.
>
> The majority of the OCP exams are multi choice so after lots of
> practise, you can 'memorise' most of the answers. If you have no DBA
> experience, at least study hard around the issues in each question.
> It will give you a good grounding later on.
>
> Mark
>
> sam777t_at_yahoo.com (Sam Talebbeik) wrote in message news:<9ec3a1ef.0106111411.574eac78_at_posting.google.com>...
> > Folks,
> >
> > I have posted a couple of questions about getting Oracle DBA certification
> > on this news group in the past few days.
> >
> > So far the feedback that I have gotten has been very negative. One person
> > even commented that the DBA training and the exam questions have nothing
> > to do with the "actual" DBA work and the Oracle shops really do not care who
> > has and who does not have a certificate.
> >
> > I am completely confused and I need more comments from Oracle old timers
> > particularly those with a certificate.
> >
> > Doesn't the certificate actually show that you have the "minimum"
> > requirements for a DBA job ? I looked at the course material for the DBA
> > and it looks very relevant (PL/SQL, Installation, Perf monitoring, Backup
> > and recovery).
> >
> > Regards,
> > Sam
  Received on Sat Jun 23 2001 - 04:28:06 CDT