Re: Oracle Master Program ?

In article <328BF35E.31C_at_ozemail.com.au>, Gary Piper <gpiper_at_ozemail.com.au> writes
>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/
>----------------------------------------------------------------------

I play with Oracle too. I agree with the above, experience and the ability to act effectively under pressure (i.e. the human aspects) are very important too, not the ability to parrot the manuals.

-- 
Chris Dipple, Production DBA, Royal Bank of Scotland