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Re: Total oracle newbie

From: Jeff <jeff_at_work.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 15:17:11 GMT
Message-ID: <b2doj6$rs7$1@cronkite.cc.uga.edu>


In article <pan.2003.02.11.14.28.25.208984_at_yahoo.com.au>, "Howard J. Rogers" <howardjr2000_at_yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>So yes, Oracle customers do have the right to expect quality training, but
>(like a car warranty) there are precautions *you* should take just in case,
>and there are mechanisms to deal with occasions when for one reason or
>another it doesn't happen.

True, and good advice to boot. However, not really the issue I was foaming over. :-)

I have not had too bad an experience with the instructors I've had. Few complaints overall. Probably the worst was when I felt like an instructor was theory-only (teaching-only) without sufficient hands-on working experience--curriculum experts--which sometimes made answering my questions harder or less profitable. But, good or plodding, I think I usually got what I needed from the courses I took.

>The people who write the course material, by the way, are all undoubtedly
>extremely competent. But that doesn't mean they don't have to skate over
>some issues which are capable of sparking a religious war if subject to

As I've taken my share of courses (both ILT and CBT), I've seen the errors in the course materials, and these were not just semantically or arguably wrong, but patently, blatantly wrong. Thankfully, instructors usually pointed them out so that we could correct them; although, I have had to point out a few myself. Practice exercises that wouldn't work, examples that were illogical, etc. These things should've been caught if someone took the time to review/test/edit the material before distribution.

>close debate (witness what goes on here on certain topics, such as the
>right block size or the need to separate indexes from tables): courses
>last a finite number of days, and the material has to fit accordingly!
>Sometimes that means writing things which are 'generally' true, but not
>always specifically accurate. If you get an instructor who's willing to

I've seen a great deal of strong condemnation here of Oracle's Tuning curriculum. Are you now saying that there's not significant room for improvement there? I think it's pretty bad that what Oracle teaches about performance tuning is considered largely a waste of effort by real-world DBA's (and some Oracle instructors).

>look into some of those subjects, it's a bonus, not a sign that the
>material is necessarily bad. For the same reason, not all instructors get
>to preview the material before release because it would never be released
>if they did!
>
>And also, speaking from personal prior experience, not everyone who is good at
>delivering training is good at writing (or advising on) training material.

True. But surely a company with Oracle's resources and manpower should be able to find enough of those who are to improve the course materials to a point where it isn't such an easy target for criticism. What of instructors that have actually offered Oracle Education help in this area and, seemingly, those offers were ignored or rejected?

Oracle training, IMHO, is generally good, don't get me wrong. It just sometimes seems to me like OE isn't doing all that it should to make the training better... such that students need never question the value of their Oracle training later. Received on Wed Feb 12 2003 - 09:17:11 CST

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