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Re: Suggestions for first exam ...

From: Thomas T <T_at_T>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 17:41:47 -0400
Message-ID: <3f74b29c$1@rutgers.edu>

"tojo" <Tojo_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:MPG.19de47cc10ccf4429896af_at_news.t-online.de...
> In article <un78nvccpnttevd2fkel3ns7so8h4td4cq_at_4ax.com>,
> fleeting_at_net1plus.com says...
> > I am going to go online in a few weeks and try for the second time to
> > pass the Oracle exam (IZO-007). I have noticed that the quizes that
> > came with the CD's that I study are ok up to a point, but do not
> > really reflect what I found on the online exam.
> >
> > For instance, there are a lot more SQL statements to compare in the
> > test than what I see in the CD tests, so I was caught a bit off guard.
> >
> > My question: is there a site somewhere that shows a lot of practice
> > questions that are close to what I might expect on the IZO-007 exam? I
> > feel very prepared with what I studied from the CD's, however, it
> > seems that the questions from the actual test are more in depth and I
> > want to feel more enabled to pass.
> >
> This is not a test for a German driver's license - you can't just
> memorize practice questions. If the exam caught you off guard, how do
> you think things will be in the Real World? If you feel the actual test
> was more in depth, then I suggest immersing yourself more deeply in the
> software. There's just no other way, and you'll be thankful you did.
>
> -- Tom

One thing that I don't like about my book's practice CD (which forced me to slog through the earlier "I learned this years ago" chapters for the sqlplus exam) is that the questions don't give me enough information on the tables. How am I supposed to know if a column is a varchar or a char? Or if it's a varchar holding a numeric value? When I write a query, I know what the data types are for the column; and if I forget, I run a desc tablename to get my info. Oh well.

I even downloaded the trial version of SelfTestSoftware's test to try it out. Well, after learning what I did on these newsgroups as regards indexes, I found a question that bothered me! The answer's wrong! In fact, the question's even wrong!

I dug the question up for everyone here, just because it irritated me. It was in 1ZO-023, Oracle 8i Architecture & Administration. (Yep, 8i... guess SelfTestSoftware won't let you get a trial version of their 9i test software!)

Which command would you use to regain space for an index containing deleted entries?

1. ALTER TABLE emp DROP INDEX;
2. ALTER INDEX emp_idx REBUILD;
3. ALTER INDEX emp_idx COALESCE;
4. ALTER INDEX emp_idx DEALLOCATE UNUSED;

So from what I learned from this newsgroup and Tom Kyte's site, I chose answer 3, Coalesce.

Guess what the test said? It told me I was wrong, and that I should ALTER INDEX emp_idx REBUILD!! And from what I learned here, rebuilding an index will just make the database work harder to attain it's natural "size". So any space regained is temporary until the database irons itself back out.

And from that, I determined that I might be setting myself up for a bad score, just because I know more then the test does. Oh, goodie. Watch, there will be a question about separating DATA and INDEX tablespaces on the test, too. (sigh)

[/rant]

-Thomas Received on Fri Sep 26 2003 - 16:41:47 CDT

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