Re: Certification
- From: "Niall Litchfield" <niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 16:38:17 +0100
I disagree at least in principle Stephen - if not in practice - It seems to
me that, yes the value of education is in the effort which is put in along
the way, and not in the end piece of paper. It also has something to do with
the credentials and rigour of the institution that does the educating, which
is why I still value an Oxbridge (or equivalent in other countries) degree
above one from the University of the West of England - and I value the UWE
credential above 'A' levels or equivalent.
There are 2 factors at work here, one the quality of the instruction I have
to say Oracle University seem to have pretty much covered, I've not had bad
experiences at all there. The second is the quality of the exam - her I
think OU (and the other vendors) falls down badly since their exams can
essentially be passed without study, but purely by memorising exam cram
books. The remedy for this IMO isn't to require an attendance certificate,
but to ensure that the exam requires thought and understanding to pass - old
style written questions seem to work well in this regard but I'm not holding
my breath on that one.
On 5/30/07, Stephen Booth <stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 30/05/07, David Lord <dlordster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I agree. I've been a DBA for 10 years but have only recently got OCP.
> I mainly work on 9i, so it helped me enormously to get to grips with
> the new features in 10g. Okay, I could have taken a new features
> course, but I don't think I would have learnt nearly as much falling
> asleep at the back of a 5 day course as I did in the two months of
> swatting that I did for the exams.
Maybe I'm bweing picky but what you both seem to really be saying is
that it was the studying for the OCP that was useful, not the OCP
itself. If Oracle just published each year a list of topics (possibly
along with links to online tutorials and reference texts) saying
something like "We think this is what a DBA should know.", maybe
include some 'Test you knowledge' quizes, wouldn't that be as useful?
Stephen
--
It's better to ask a silly question than to make a silly assumption.
http://stephensorablog.blogspot.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenboothuk
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Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info
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