Re: Outrage that OCP exams are now unproctored - Comments?

"Bert Bear" <bertbear_at_NOSPAMbertbear.net> wrote in message news:AGGQ9.6238$0Q1.2911332446_at_newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
> Till a state says IT (programmers, administrators, etc.) needs state
> certification, the best we have is industry certification.

Interestingly in the UK, I can't speak for the States or for Oz, most the *professions* run the training/exam system for members of the professions. This applies for Lawyers,Accountants etc. Rather than look to the State, I would wish to look to Industry bodies that had the clout to be recognized (and didn't just represent large supplier interests). You'd also get away from the entirely daft notion that you were an Oracle 8i or MSSQL 7 DBA and towards the fact that you were a DBA (or developer or what have you). They don't certify Accountants in the use of Sage or Pocket calculators (and certainly not in Excel). they train and test them in Accounting/Auditing etc.

If this line of argument has any merit (and despite Howard's injunctions against posting experience) I am both a part-qualified ACA and an OCP which I hope gives me some insight, then we should be moving away from software features based testing to testing and developing professional IT skills. Things I'd suggest (from a DBA view point) would include

Database Design
Physical Storage characteristics
Security principles
Set Operations vs Procedural Loops and when to use which. Backup Principles
What is a transaction?
Change Management
SQL
The development lifecycle

I'm sure others can add/scratch from the above list.

--
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
Audit Commission UK
*****************************************
Please include version and platform
and SQL where applicable
It makes life easier and increases the
likelihood of a good answer
******************************************