Re: Interactive Courseware for Oracle Certification

From: Jonathan Gennick <jonathan_at_gennick.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 15:45:08 GMT
Message-ID: <37774503.7722634@netnews.worldnet.att.net>

On Sun, 27 Jun 1999 03:16:24 GMT, prahe_at_home.com (Paul Rahe) wrote:

>I'm currently studying for the OCP exam (Oracle 8 DBA). Has anyone
>used the Interactive courseware offered by Oracle to study for these
>exams? If so, were they helpful? Were they worth the price? ($1000
>each).

I thought that they were less than $1000. Personally, I don't like CBT courses. I'd much rather read a book instead. I did however, look at Oracle's SQL*Plus CBT course last year. I quickly became frustrated, because the course is a bit rigid in what it expects when you answer questions and so forth. I remember one exercise where I was asked to type in the command to describe a table. I entered a DESCRIBE command like this:

        describe xxx

My answer was counted as WRONG because I failed to place a semi-colon at the end of the command. In reality, semicolons aren't necessary for SQL*Plus commands, only for SQL statements. Another example involved creating a table with a primary key. The following was consedered wrong:

	create table x (
		the_key number,
		constraint x_pk primary key (the_key)
		);

The answer that the CBT was expecting was this:

	create table x (
		the_key number primary key
		);

In other words, the constraint had to be defined at the column level, not the table level. I'm in the habit of defining all my constraints at the table level. I also recall that there were problems if you placed a line-break where the CBT wasn't expecting one. In other words, the following might be acceptable:

        create table (

while this might not be:

	create table
		(

Anyway, after working my way through most of module one, I was ready to throw my computer out the window. I never bothered finishing the course.

Your mileage may vary. Some people like CBTs.

Jonathan

---

jonathan_at_gennick.com
http://gennick.com
Brighten the Corner Where You Are   Received on Sun Jun 27 1999 - 10:45:08 CDT