Gavin's Blog

Why would I create a blog, and why would you want to hang around and read it...

I like challenging myself, and my latest challenge, is OCM, Oracle Certified Master. I've been talking of getting my OCM for the last few years, and I figure the only way I'll actually make it is to actually spend the time to study and research, and the only way I'm going to get that done, is to be accountable to someone for it.

So, saying that, this site will be my journey through the trials and tribulations of going from 8i OCP to 10g OCM.

If I make myself feel guilty for not updating the blog, I might do some study, so I have something to write about?!! Make sense?

An interesting point was raised by some Anonymous person from my last
post, they said:

"After meeting
some OCMs that were barely adequate in their Oracle
knowledge I firmly believe there is no challenge in OCM and I'm
convinced the Oracle certification in general is waster of time and
money ... or my standards are just too high
...."

Is this right you reckon? I
wouldn't have thought so. Let me explain my
reasoning...

There's currently three (main) levels
of DBA certification from Oracle.

• OCA
  - Oracle Certified Associate
• OCP
  - Oracle Certified Professional
• OCM
  - Oracle Certified Master

If you have a
look at them, there's obviously quite a lot of skill level difference.


I have a feeling you (Mr/Mrs Anonymous) might have
been meeting people with either OCA, (which means they're just starting
out with Oracle technology so their Oracle knowledge could be described
as "barely adequate" to the likes of you...) or someone with an older
OCP like me...

(Before anyone
arc's up let me explain!!) I received my 8i OCP a few
years ago now, and when I got the certification, it was a lot to do
with book learnin', I reckon I could have passed just by reading books
and searching the internet for sample exams, which backs up your
arguement of "barely adequate", no hands on, real world, production,
nitty gritty, arms elbow deep in crashed database, ORA-600's flying
left right and centre, junior DBA on one side of you saying "what's
this do...?", manager on the other saying "We need to run a payrun in
the next 1/2 hour!" ...etc etc.

However if you have
a look now, you'll notice there's hands
on courses you have to attend before going for your
certification, so they're making it harder to get certified, which can
only be a good thing for us hard core dba's to achieve, and prove that
we are worth the money we expect to get paid...

And
the OCM, well, have you SEEN what they have to go through.... far out!

I challenge anyone, ANYONE to go for the OCM
exam without have an "extremely adequate knowledge" of not
only the 10g database, but the tools associated with it... I may be
wrong, any OCMers can jump on and tell me how easy it was :-) I know
I'd feel much better!

So, anyway, it's not what I
was expecting to write about today, but it's good that people are
interested, thankyou Mr/Mrs Anonymous for replying, it's meant I've had
to research more on the different levels of certification, making me
more determined to get there...

You may notice the title of the page is OCP -> OCM in 150 easy steps, 150 is a completely random number, (obviously...) I have no idea how long its going to take, or what I'm going to do in 3 steps time... Feel free to add your 2 cents worth as I go along, and if you reckon I've missed a step, let me know ;-)

The other thing to say here, is if you want to get your 10gOCM, NOW IS THE TIME to start if you wanna go through it with me! If you were thinking of it, or not thinking of it until I mentioned it, let me know.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I currently hold an 8i OCP, so I've got a bit of catching up to do to be able to get my 10g OCM, thankfully those nice people in Oracle Education have made an upgrade exam from 8i OCP to 10g OCP, so I can skip 9i. I would have liked to get 9i, and I may go back just for completeness later on, but anyway, onward and upward...

Okeydoykey, STEP 1. Get 10g OCP.

Here's the link to the exam topics, looks a bit daunting at first glance, but I reckon I can get through researching most of it no probs.

I'm not going to post all the links to the research I'm doing, coz that'll make it easy for anyone reading this later... I'll post questions I've got, and questions that other people ask me during the research they're doing, but don't think you're gonna get a free ride here... ;-)

OK, to give you a hand, here's a link to the first exam topic. Thats it, no more help after this one...



No, seriously, if I gave you to a link to what I thought was the answer, but had the wrong information on it, how would I feel... it's ok that I fail coz I stuffed up...







  Oracle Server Security : Explain the privileged connection options

This is where the whole process of getting my OCM will break down I reckon. Yesterday was a big day at work, which meant I didn't get a chance to write on the blog, which meant I didn't have time to study. (When I say big day at work, I mean 17 hours, so cut me some slack ;-)

But, I'm back, I'm ready... kinda, might be having another big day at work, configuring a production site of EBS isn't usually a slack day...

While I was waiting for some patches at about midnight last night, I decided to check some of the other Oracle bloggers out. Reading through some of Lutz Hartmanns blog I saw the title " DROP DATABASE INCLUDING BACKUPS with RMAN in Oracle 10g Release 2".

Do you remember having managers or developers trying to be funny saying, "yeah, I'll jump in and type 'drop database' , ha ha ha." And you'd think to yourself, "you pillic", but because they thought it was funny, you'd have to go along with it and laugh...

I can't believe they put drop database in, let alone including backups!! Now those people who thought they were funny, are now really dangerous!.
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It's now the end of today, and I've spent the whole day running around after 50 different things, and haven't had a chance to do any more study, I'm not liking this new trend. maybe tomorrow...