Re: Oracle Certified Master - is it any good?

On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Nuno Souto wrote:

> So, what's the real advantage of the OCP? I mean: anyone given time,
> can become a valued DBA. OCP notwithstanding. It's all motivation,
> isn't it? And professionalism. Something no certificate can ever hope
> to prove.

Well, I think that OCP would be more valuable if the topics covered were determined by the community rather than some ivory-tower committee at Oracle.

What you learn through OCP is what Oracle wants you to know, which sometimes has very little to do with what you need to understand to run an Oracle database.

What don't you cover?

• lots of specifics with backup and restore
• sqlplus /nolog (how could they leave that out?)
• any _options in init.ora
• autotrace/tkprof/explain plan coverage is very poor

UNIX stuff, including:

- exp/imp with named pipes
- here documents
- ipcs, ipcrm

Maybe DB2's way is best with a separate exam for each platform.

   / Charles J. Fisher                   | "Those who do not understand UNIX /
  /  cfisher_at_rhadmin.org                 |  are condemned to reinvent it,   /
 /   http://rhadmin.org                  |  poorly."   -- Henry Spencer    /
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