Re: What Use is OCP? Plenty!

mikerault_at_earthlink.net (Mike Ault) wrote in message news:<37fab3ab.0209290929.40a38e71_at_posting.google.com>...
> I am afraid the idea that we could set up a viable internship program
> for Oracle DBAs is a bit naive. Who, may I ask, will pay for it? Shall
> we have a United DBA Internship Fund? The UDIF? Companies won't, even
> if it is in their best interest.

I don't entirely agree with this, as many a business have had entire technology initiatives succeed with staffs by student interns and co-op students, so long as they had enough guiding hands. It's not about companies paying for anything, it's that their paying *less* for interns that eventually become very sophisticated DBAs, engineers, etc. It's win/win.

We know that interns work and are successful at the college/university level. Now to get this to work in a professional certification program is the challenge. I don't doubt it will eventually happen though. Adult continuing education is probably going to be one of the top 3 global industries in the coming decades. Internships are a part of that.

> I also have to laugh every time someone complains about Oracle
> requiring a hands on test for the Oracle Master and a hands on
> instructor lead course for the new OCP for DBA, aren't these the very
> things we have said where left out of the original OCP? Come on, we
> can't have it both ways.

This I agree with.

Here's my perspective. It's longish and goes on wild tangents here and there, so curl up with some cocoa and read on, if you're interested, otherwise the quick summary is: "I don't think OCP is worth much but I'm doing it anyway because the OCM looks interesting".

I've lurked here for several months, and I agree with some of the anti-OCP posts on this group, primarily because I've seen way too many certified MCSEs, MCSDs, or Java programmers get away with certification and still not have much of a grasp of the fundamentals. However -- I'm not anti-certification. I think it's use is primarily for college students and career-switchers to get their foot in the door; secondarily, it's a body of knowledge that serves as a sufficient baseline for anyone interested in delving into that particular subject.

I'm primarily a trainer and developer (it says SENIOR ARCHITECT on my business card even though I insisted to HR that I don't design buildings). I have worked with J2EE solutions for several years, even co-written a J2EE book (CodeNotes for J2EE). I've worked with the Oracle 8.0 through 9i database for around 2 years, though not with tremendous depth. My database background was mainly object databases (GemStone), and a little bit of SQL Server, and Sybase. Anyway, I have seen time and time again projects fail because of a lack of knowledge of the fundamentals, especially in the database. It amazes me the level of ignorance out there, that Oracle or any RDBMS for that matter is just a black box you can shove your objects in.

The straw that broke the back for me was picking up Thomas Kyte's Expert One on One book, and reading page after page of ridiculed EJB projects. It really opened my eyes, that it's quite possible, and even desirable, for a developer to know as much about their database as a DBA does. My experience with object databases reflected this attitude as well, since the developer really is the DBA too in that environment, since you sometimes have to roll-your-own indexes, query engines, and access paths (needless to say, we had bunk beds at the office in those days). And I decided right then that "the world needs more Tom Kytes", so, with that lofty goal in mind, I decided to become an expert in Oracle.

So, I'm taking my 9i OCP. The main reason? So I can take my OCM in 2003 (hopefully). I'm lucky that I have a laboratory environment for our proof-of-concept projects where I can dig deep into Oracle along with my other day to day stuff (web services are boring anyway). Plus I have it installed on my Mac OS X Powerbook and abuse it on my commute home & at night. OCM seems to be be the "real" test of knowledge, well besides actually running a production database, that is. 2 days locked in a room sounds good to me. If it works for Cisco CCIE's, it may just work for Oracle.

From my perspective, OCP it's a good baseline of "gap plugging" knowledge. I find the Sybex books (thus far) are the most technically accurate and thorough in their approach. For example, they DO talk about (at length) manual rollback segment administration in the 9i Performance Tuning exam prep book, and not just automatic undo.

But the 9i OCP is *not* my primary source of Oracle knowledge. It's sort of my "esoteric fact" filler. My main source of knowledge has been:

1. Jonathan's book, Tom's book, James Morle's book
2. Asktom.oracle.com, Jonathan's website, Steve Adams' website, and HJR's old papers that I managed to find hiding out on the web somewhere
3. This newsgroup. The separate data/index thread, index rebuilding thread, and the oracle myths threads especially gave me a lot of insight.
4. The advanced Oracle University courses I've been taking to satisfy the 2-course requirement for OCM. The 9i SQL Tuning Workshop was useful, though I had already learned about 70% of that course through reading this newsgroup. I've luckily managed to duck under the 1 course OCP requirement because I finished my first exam before the Sept 1st deadline, as those courses are way too easy anyway.

It's fascinating to contrast Oracle University course materials, OCP exam prep material, and the stuff on this newsgroup.

So, as far as I'm concerned, the paper OCP isn't worth much to me. When I interview people for jobs, their certifications just tell me I should ask them harder questions, because hey, they're certified. ("Oh, you're a J2EE architect are you? What's that, you only know how to draw UML and not actually design a system? Hey now!"). Sometimes they show depth, and that interests me. Most of the time, they don't show much depth.

I just want to be able to confirm to myself that "Yeah, I have a good understanding of Oracle and can add value to a project". If my opinions resonate with the experts here and I can get that OCM, I'll feel pretty spiffy, and I think my career will too. OCP alone won't mean much.

Cheers
Stu Received on Mon Sep 30 2002 - 18:54:31 CDT