Re: Professional or Not (was Database Design)

Mark D Powell wrote:

> J, about you points regarding certification. Earning IT
> certifications does not prove or make a person qualified. The
> certification shows that the individual has managed to meet certain
> technical standards; however, a technically qualified individual may
> still be completely unable to apply their technical knowledge to solve
> business problems in a workable manner. Not to mention a person with
> an IT certification may still be completely void of other necessary
> traits: timeliness, hygiene, ability to work with others,
> communication skills, and so on.
>
> The IT certification processes themselves are open to question. Many
> of the test topics and questions required for certification are of
> debatable value and correctness.

With respect to current certifications you are correct: They are worthless. But look at the situation from the standpoint that a university such as mine were offering a degree. A typical question on the final might read something like this:

Here are two PCs, a SAN, a Redhat Adv. Server CD, some Oracle 9i CDs, a .dmp file, and Oracle's TAF Demo. Import the .dmp file. Build a two node RAC installation and demonstrate fail-over. Identify issues related to data integrity and performance. Tune performance to meet specific performance criteria. Clean up the data and create all constraints you think are required to enforce future data integrity. You have three days to complete this task.

And I'll bet Jonathan, Howard, Richard, and numerous others could easily flesh out the curriculum such that those that graduated could actually do what was expected of them.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)