I am a bitter opponent of the certifications. I was Oracle OCA for
Oracle 8i and 9i. I felt sick in my stomach when doing those
certification exams. Those certifications require essentially the same
skill as was required to learn poems in school: listen my children and
you shall hear about the midnight ride of Paul Revere....A beautiful
poem, though.
What certification process does not teach is the understanding of the
different components. I have interviewed certified DBA people who
haven't understood the tuning process. In particular, I asked the
following question: users of a particular application start complaining
that the application response is slow. What do you do? The most frequent
and completely inaccurate answer was "i run AWR report". Some of the
interviewed folks didn't know what gc 2-way waits are and how to avoid
them. And if you go a bit out of the Oracle universe and ask for the
difference between a PC and a mini computer or why would you need an HBA
with iSCSI, there is a fair amount of blank stares or tries to rephrase
the question and offer it as an answer. Such blatantly rude tactics
immediately get under my skin. There are cases of OCP who know only
Oracle SQL and only on Windows. Until approximately 5 years ago, one of
my regular questions was the one about the airspeed velocity of an
unladen swallow. However, recent candidates have not watched mandatory
classics like MP & Holly Grail, Life of Brian, Dr. Strangelove or
Apocalypse Now. Strange as it may sound, some of them haven't even seen
The Animal House. My questions are out of date and can only be answered
by the people 45 or older. I've said to a new DBA that she's now under
double secret probation and she asked me what is that? Until very
recently, the understanding of the references like that revealed certain
psychology type and belonging to certain group of people, usually known
as "computer geeks" of which I am a proud member. No certification
guarantees of overall good understanding of IT technology. One of my
newer questions is: how will you find out who is doing the most of IO on
your DB server? The first answer is usually a query to V$SESSTAT, which
will not catch a botched Perl script or a security product which
continually checks file flags. ClamAV anyone? What a reply like this
tells me is that the user doesn't understand the overall IT technology
and is problematic, despite a certification. I prefer good references
and experiences on the resume to certification.
On 10/27/19 9:48 PM, Vishnu Potukanuma wrote:
A certification will definitely help and will elevate your carrier as well... especially OCM.. and the employment prospects are high provided that your resume makes it till the technical panel ..--
The irony is in reality most recruiters/managers who filter the resumes doesn't care or know about what is OCM.. in few cases they thought OCP is higher....
I see that you are an Oracle performance DBA in your current role.. explore this area to the fullest means possible... Oracle DBAs specialising in performance tuning are a rare breed and you wont find many in the market and the actual filtering ratio will be 200/300:1 to find a good performance tuning DBA who knows stuff apart from the fundamentals and we had to struggle a lot each time a DBA would go out of the team and it took us approximately 3 months to find the right resource. I would recommend you to focus all your attention in Cloud / Performance tuning for now and prepare for OCM in your part time.
it hardly takes 2 months to finish preparing and practicing for OCM especially if you follow the schedule properly take a topic a day (probably an hour or two) and try to finish it and practice it the alternate day... Its a tough exam but it is real easy! but earning the certification is different from living up to the expectations.
Thanks,
Vishnusivathej
Oracle 11g/12c OCM
On Sun, Oct 27, 2019 at 2:36 AM Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:gogala.mladen@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On 10/26/19 9:51 AM, kunwar singh wrote
Hi all,
What would be more beneficial in the long term in your opinion?
Oracle OCM certification (and things learned during its time
preparation ) or learning cloud .
I don’t want to do both as don’t get much free time and want to
gain expert level knowledge so that I am gainfully employed for
next 5 years or so .
I am oracle performance dba in my current role .
So looking for insights on what community members here think .
I am interested in both , but thinking what value OCM will hold
with all the cloud focus these days . In my job I am getting
chance to play with python , so atleast I am learning a new skill
currently too.
Rgds,
Kunwar
-- Cheers,
Kunwar
Hi Kunwar!
Why not both? You can become an Oracle Cloud Master, OCM for
short. In other words, you could become a genuine Oracle rain man.
Regards
-- Mladen Gogala
Database Consultant
Tel: (347) 321-1217
