Re: Oracle Master Program ?

Bruce Pihlamae wrote:
>
> I'm interested in the US readers who have supposedly had this program
> running for a while and what they think of it.
>
> ======= Stuff deleted ======
>
> Your thoughts and comments please.
>

Bruce,

I like your self have been “playing” with Oracle for a good number of years ( starting with Oracle 4 ), over this time I have installed, upgraded, recovered and supported more databases than I care to remember, however it appears that unless I attend the Masters courses, I will, alas never be recognised as an Oracle EXPERT.

As for courses, I have met several people who have attended the Oracle DBA courses that still do not know how to build a database. Just because one attends a course does not make that person an expert.

I am however unclear as to the extent of courses that must be attended in order to be considered an EXPERT, must the DBA have attended courses in all Oracle products, including Finacials, CASE, Web server etc... where is the boundary, with a product set as large as Oracle’s I could spend the rest of my life in courses.

Regardless of my “experince” with both Oracle and Oracle financials, I fear that as I have never attended an Oracle course ( I have taught SQL*PLUS, SQL*FORMS and DBA courses ) installed and maintained a full set of Oracle products, I cannot consider myself as an Oracle “EXPERT” ( He hangs his head in shame )

About the money making venture of offering “DBA Certification”. I my self answered several questions from an example test. The questions I saw were geared towards learning and repeating the Oracle manuals ( Which have been incorrect in the past ) rather than experience, my answers were influence by my knowledge of known bugs, problems and work around etc... with different versions.

It is 2am, the business is about to do a year end close and one of the disks has failed, the failed disk contains both critical data and indexes from the production and development databases. You have two dead databases, a very upset IT manager and an accountant who is about to have a nervous break down. “When will the database be back on line?”, This is when the DBA earns their money, not knowing that a table has an X byte over head per block, that’s why we have manuals.

In closing If we are forced by commercial, and marketing pressures to obtain certification or Expert status, I would expect that the people conducting the courses, writing the tests and working in support will themselves have obtained Expert status.

Just my $0.02 worth

Gary Piper

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Gary Piper ( gpiper_at_ozemail.com.au )
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gpiper/