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IN SEARCH OF AN OCP
This page will form a web diary covering my efforts to attain the hallowed status of Oracle DBA OCP. It will attempt to be an honest appraisal of my adventures on the path to enlightenment. A brief summary of my 20+ years in IT follows. I have worked in Technical Support as VMS System Manager, Oracle DBA, VME Support and then moved on to technical team leads and project management. I have about 7 years DBA experience although the last 2 –3 years have been less hands-on and more management. All the projects I have worked on have had an Oracle RDBMS as the base. I have consistently subscribed to the Oracle–L list as a means of keeping up my DBA knowledge updated and refreshed. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Oracle systems and I am keenly aware that you can never know enough and there are always new avenues to explore. I have long been an opponent of the concept of certification. I have always believed that real life experience as shown on a strong CV offers a lot more than a certificate showing that you have passed examinations. Nothing has changed my view on that and I believe that the concept of certification (not just Oracle) is a great marketing scheme. About 4 years ago someone I was working with calculated that it would cost about £500 to gain certification. This was a combination of travel costs (to London which was then one of the few places in the UK offering a test centre), time lost from work and the cost of the exams. Nowadays the exams alone cost almost £500 so it is not a cheap option. Recently I changed employment and went to work on an hourly rate rather than a daily one. I then found out that a test centre existed 5 minutes walk from my office, the final convincer was that the company I was working through offered to pay for the tests. I was almost hooked, but not quite. I was a good DBA (maybe not the best, but certainly capable); did I really want to suffer the stress of learning for the tests and then failing after all that work? I thought hard about and decided to set of on my odyssey of discovery. Starting off I looked at various study books and spoke to other DBAs I knew who were at various stages of certification. I made a note of any interesting comments on the Oracle-L list and finally made my mind to go for the Exam Cram set of books from Coriolus. I had decided to go for the 8 certification rather than 8i as a lot of study material was available for 8 and I needed to build experience of 8 first anyway. I was determined to use the opportunity as a learning experience and not just a means of putting the right tick in the multiple choice box. First surprise was there were now 5 exams not 4 and the networking exam had crept in from somewhere. I did wonder what was in there to justify a complete exam and I am sure the word ‘marketing’ crossed my mind once again. I logged on to Amazon and ordered 4 Exam Cram books as the networking one was out of stock at that time. Delivery was in 2 days, as it always is from Amazon in my experience, but for the next 2 weeks the books sat on my bookshelf looking very impressive. I then decided to start work on the SQL and PL/SQL exam first. This was a hard decision because I thought that this would be the most difficult exam of all for me to pass. I had only used PL/SQL a few times in my career and these were only relatively small programs with no more than 20 lines of code (including comments, as a workmate said when reading a draft of this article). I do not think I am unique in this as a lot of DBAs I know have little experience in writing ‘serious’ PL/SQL, and certainly in the area that I work in (managing production systems and implementing new ones) it is not the strongest skill set required. I spent a couple of days (by which I really mean about 1 hour per night) looking at the material and the only real surprise was the section on database design. I did find it hard to understand what that section was doing firstly in the DBA OCP and secondly in the SQL and PL/SQL exam. I then missed a couple of days study and realised that the best thing I could do was to book the exam for about 10 days time and that would really focus my mind. The test centre that was 5 minutes walk away was not yet certified to take the Oracle exams although they were fine for Novell, Microsoft et al. The next nearest centre was about 20 minutes drive but the first available date with a midday time was 6 weeks away. I really was flabbergasted, I had thought I would have my pick of both dates and times but that was certainly not the case. I finally scheduled an exam for about 4 weeks time (October 13) and that was that, the point of no return. I worked hard the next 2-3 weeks, studying the Ault book, using the Oracle documentation and using both the Oracle test pack and the Cramsession one. A week prior to the exam I did the full sample test in the Ault book and achieved 65%. I knew it would be touch and go as to whether I passed or not. I had identified several errors in the Ault book and eventually I found an errata page on the Coriolus site which contained some of them. I e-mailed info on another mistake (use of the NLS_DATE_FORMAT parameter) in the test questions but I never received a response and the web-site had not been updated 2 months later. On the day of the exam I really was the proverbial ‘bag of nerves’ but when I settled in front of the screen they seemed to disappear and I resolved to just concentrate on the questions. My initial thought was that how much harder the questions were to read and understand in the exam than in any of the practise work I had already completed. The second impression was just how many PL/SQL questions there were, probably 50% of the total questions. All the way through the exam I felt similar to a golfer who is playing a match play against a strong opponent and is always having to hit a good shot just to stay in touch. I never felt positive that I would pass and all the way through the exam I thought I knew the answers but was never positive. I finally finished the exam with about 30 minutes spare and the result showed that I had only achieved 37 correct answers when I needed 39. I had scored a mark of 64% against the required 68% pass rate. I was disappointed, but not terribly so as 65% was the approximate mark I had been getting in pre-exam tests. I resolved to take the DBA Admin exam next and park the PL/SQL re-sit until later. I did some preliminary work on the DBA Admin exam and realised that it was easier exam than PL/SQL for me at least. I downloaded the cramsession and worked through the Coriolus Exam Cram book. Once again there were inaccuracies in the questions and no errata to be found on the web site. Still I had a lot more confidence that I could pass this and booked the exam for the end of November to give me 2 weeks preparation time. Unfortunately a fortnight tends to fly past when you are occupied with other things and the exam loomed rapidly. I was really nervous, not about the exam but about failing 2 exams in a row. The day arrived and I got to the exam centre nice and early and went in. I started immediately once I had registered and had no real problems with the questions. I had a momentary panic attack when I struggled with 2 consecutive questions but I always felt that I would pass this one. Right at the end I had a moments' self-doubt before hitting the 'completed' button. I passed with a 84% pass mark which I was quite happy with. In the test exams I had been achieving 75%-80% so again they were a good guideline to the actual exam. I had now to decide which exam to for next. It was a choice between Performance Tuning, Backup and Recovery or PL/SQL again. When a work colleague borrowed my Tuning Exam Cram book then the choice was made. Backup and Recovery it was to be. Normally I would feel quite comfortable with most of the concepts of B&R, unfortunately, RMAN had been added to the melting pot. I had never used RMAN and I understood that almost half of the questions were likely to cover RMAN. I packed my book into my rucksack and resolved to start studying. My strength building exercises are going well. Well that can be the only explanation for carrying my study book back and forth to work every day for 4 weeks without hardly ever taking it out to look at. Mid January and I have started revising again. I can answer most of the sample questions and a lot of those on RMAN. We actually use RMAN on my site, but only on some large development projects. As I manage the production DBA team I cannot gain any hands-on experience of RMAN although that will change in the next month as we prepare to take on production support for the new projects in a parallel running environment. I registered for the exam with 10 days notice. I felt reasonably confident but one can never be certain. On the day of the exam I spent the morning flicking through the Exam Cram questions and then made my way to the test centre. I arrived 30 minutes early and went straight in to the test once I had registered. There were 9 questions where I had narrowed it down to 2 choices and 1 to which all 4 options seemed reasonable. I marked these for later review. I then answered all the rest and reviewed the marked choices. I made a calculated decision on each one but in most cases I was not absolutely positive. The one with 4 plausible options was concerned with a parallel copy command in RMAN. The only answer I definitely know I got wrong was probably the easiest of all. Which view shows the state of the archivelog process? I narrowed the options down to v$database and v$instance. I then changed my selection from database to instance !! I had whizzed through the test in 37 minutes. Once again a moment's hesitation and then exited the test. I had passed with 53 out of 60 correct. The weak areas were concerned with RMAN so that was no great surprise to me. The Wong Exam Cram book was excellent. Some of the test questions came up in the exam and there was nothing in the exam which was not in the book. I had already decided that I would look at the networking test next and I downloaded the BrainBuzz pdf for further analysis. There were only 17 pages to it compared with 29 for the Backup exam so hopefully there may be less to learn. I intend studying and taking the exam before the end of February. Late February and I have just passed (well scraped though actually) the Networking exam. I purchased the Exam cram book and used the Brainbuzz pdf once again. This time I did not find the Brainbuzz document very good at all. It was badly written, unstructured and disjointed. The Exam Cram was up to the normal standards and covered all the necessary sections. The concept of the Networking exam is quite difficult because it requires the candidate to study for areas which he may never have used. These include Oracle Names, MTS and Connection Manager. However I did find it useful as it highlighted several areas where I had enough knowledge to make a utility work but I now found out more information that will make me a better DBA in the future. The exam is probably the quickest one to take as most of the questions are quick to read and have single or few word answers. I thought I was well prepared and knew the material well but I did not score well. I gained 45 out of 62 with the pass rate being 43 marks. Too close for comfort. There seemed to be a lot of similarity in the questions and certainly the first 10 or 12 I was asked all concerned MTS and its usage. One area which seemed to be quite popular was detailed knowledge of logging and tracing, where to put it on, what was in the output files etc. Overall I was disappointed with the result but happy with the pass. Now comes crunch time. Do I resit PL/SQL or look at Performance Tuning? I know PL/SQL will be difficult (for me at least) but there again I do not want to be stuck with it at the end. Decisions decisions. I have had a bit of a delay in continuing with my OCP as I have had to find a new contract but that is all settled now. I must thank my previous company, Interv8 for agreeing to pay for 2 exams despite the fact I was no longer working for them - an excellent company to work for. I scheduled the PL/SQL for 2 weeks time and started to revise but did very little work. On the Monday prior to the Wednesday exam I rang up to cancel the exam. Unfortunately the test was scheduled for Tuesday, the next day. Panic stations. I did the OCP sample test that can be downloaded from Oracle and achieved 85% which was better than I had achieved for the first exam. I then worked all evening and was up early the next day studying before work. I did the Exam Cram test and got 85% again so I felt I was ready. I went in for the exam and found it just as hard the 2nd time around. The questions really made you work hard. I think I got most of the DBA questions right but was certainly unsure on some of the PL/SQL questions. At the end I really believed I had given everything I had and thought it would be close, either way. I had passed by 1 question, achieving 40 correct answers when the required mark was 39. I really was overjoyed as I had expected to fail. I know my score was poor but it was good enough for me. The final exam Performance Tuning was scheduled 2 weeks after the last exam and as usual I expect to be doing little preparation for it. I worked hard for the final exam, did a lot of revision and read a lot of new material. I must admit it was the most interesting one of them all to prepare for. I actually wrote a paper on basic performance tuning for the site I was working at and the research for that combined well with my preparation for the exam. I took the exam and passed with a few questions spare. It was harder than I expected but overall quite fair. Well I am now an OCP. Was it worth it?. The answer is definitely yes. I learnt a lot, refreshed things I thought I knew and explored some new areas, especially on the Networking side. Certainly the contract market in the UK is starting to mention OCP Certification as a 'good to have'. I also feel that provided someone has gained experience in the field as well it can only be a good thing. Will I go for the 8i upgrade exam?. I really don't know. There are so many new features that it seems to be a hard exam to pass. Whilst I have used 8i on several sites there is an awful lot I still need to gain experience on. Watch this space as they say. After over a year of thinking about going for the 8i upgrade exam (IZO-020) in August 2002 I finally decided to do something about it. The deciding factor was the arrival of Oracle 9i Release 2 which was seen as a reliable and stable platform. I knew several fellow DBA's who were on sites that were going to start migrating to 9i. I had previously only got a superficial knowledge of 9i new functionality and my main source of information had been a series of articles that Joe Testa had contributed to the Oracle-L newsgroup. These articles can be found on Joe's site at www.oracle-dba.com/9i/default.htm. I did not want to start looking at 9i whilst still having the spectre of an 8i exam hanging over me. Furthermore I was also aware that 8i had a finite life and that Oracle would soon be announcing the end of the 8i upgrade exam which would mean taking all the 4 9i exams (note only 4 not 5 as there was for 8i) not just a single upgrade exam. As a commitment I purchased the Coriolus Exam Cram book by Robert Freeman and started to study. That was pretty pointless without a date to work to, so I booked a date for the exam (and paid my £90). Once a date was agreed I still found it quite hard to get focused. I read the first chapter of new features (Migrating and Upgrading) about 10 times and did the test questions a few times. The problem was that I never got any further than that chapter and kept starting again over a period of a few weeks. I pushed back my test date about 3 times and really was pretty aimless about it all. Mid October and I scheduled the exam for 29th of that month and I really started working. I studied the full book and did the practice tests at the end of each chapter but I did not look at the big test at the end of the book as I wanted to save that until just before the big day. I was aware that partitioning questions would form a significant part of the test and I really studied hard on the various options with range, hash and composite partitions and also the various types of index and the situations in which they could be dropped, split, exchanged, rebuilt, become unusable and all the other permutations that were possible. I had used Oracle 8i quite extensively on a number of sites but there were 2 big areas that I had little knowledge of, summary management and the database resource manager. This is where I found the concept of studying for the OCP certification particularly frustrating and rewarding at the same time. It was hard reading up on features which I was not using in real-life but equally it was good to pick up on new features and learn a lot about them. The weekend before the exam I took the 60 question test in the Exam Cram book and got about a 55% pass rate which was not too good because the exam pass rate is 67% (incorrectly stated in the book as 60%). However it was too late to cancel by then so I went ahead with the test. My attitude was that if I failed it was not going to be by all that much and I would immediately rebook the exam and study hard for the next month and ensured I passed the next time. I scraped through the exam but I was happy enough. The questions were fair but testing (as they should be). Certainly the first 6 questions (54 in total) were quite easy and I whipped through them whereas the last 20 were pretty difficult and I had to mark most of them for further review. The marking of questions to go back to later can be very helpful. Any questions I know the answer to I answer and move on. Others I select what I believe to be the correct answers and mark the question for later review. At the end of the 54 questions I had twenty questions marked and I then had a lot of time to try and work out what I should be answering. Within the test there were no questions that required a word to be typed , it was all true multiple choice. The hardest type of question was where three answers had to be selected from six or seven options. I could invariably get two that I was sure were correct and remove two options as being definitely incorrect and I was left with three choices vying for one selection. The Exam cram book was the only true resource I used. I did download the brainbuzz pdf paper (http://studyguides.cramsession.com/oracle/Oracle8iupgrade/default.asp ) which was a good summary of the new features and being free it was better value than the book but I did not think it would be easy to pass the exam using just that resource. The other resource which I have used over the last few years is the Oracle-L mailing list. This is been an invaluable source of information and has probably contributed most widely to my general Oracle knowledge, opening up new ideas and avenues of thought and ways that people are using Oracle feature of whatever version of the database they are on. It goes without saying that the Oracle documentation set provides all the necessary information but I for one would not be able to study that very easily and I have found that a dedicated study guide is necessary for me at least. So where next. Well I have started studying for the 9i exam and was disappointed to find the Coriolus Exam Cram series is no longer being continued although old stock is still available. I therefore have just purchased Oracle 9i New Features by Robert Freeman (Oracle Press). On initial inspection the format seems good although there are no end of chapter and end of book questions which I found so useful previously. There is a note in the introduction to suggest that some new features have not been covered so I may need another resource for my studying (time to check out the Brainbuzz site again). The better news is that I am working on a large 8i to 9i project and a lot of the new features will be used including Database Resource Management ( I know it was an 8i feature). I intend to some time in the future but have no great urgency. |
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