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!.
.
.
.
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...

I know it's been ages, and a few people would have thought that I'd given up, but no...

Thanks to those posting comments so far, it's been interesting to get different perspectives and opinions, Roxane, it's never too late to try something new. If you have a passion for something, then chase after it. Otherwise you'll end up regretting it later.. And Charles, I'll keep posting if you keep reading... And maybe post a few more comments on the way...


Alrighty, on with the study.

Hang on, before I get to it, I should explain where I've been. I know it looked like I'd dropped of the side of the earth, which is close but not quite. As I've mentioned before, I work for Oracle Consulting, which allows me to see some interesting clients with all sorts of weird and wonderful setups. Well, I now find myself sitting 1/2 way round the world from where I left you, implementing some absolutely awesome stuff. I'm not sure how much I can talk about, with Oracle's confidentiality clauses etc, but part of the implementation, is the one and only 10g RAC database sitting on ASM.

What better way to prepare for OCM than to go through a few implementations!

This got me thinking, it would be pretty tough wanting to do this OCM thingy if I was working with older versions of the DB everyday. Not being able to use 10gDB in anger would mean a heap more theoretical study, which is fine coz that'll never go astray, but we need hands on, nitty gritty stuff here, if I'm gonna do this OCM 2 day prac exam, I gotta be ready.

If you're planning to go through OCM, you're obviously a DBA already, but are you using 10g? If not, start banging down a few management doors!! "We don't care if it doesn't make business sense to upgrade now, WE WANT  ENVIRONMENTS TO LEARN ON!!"

might work?

If you are on older versions, what are they? Surely nobody's on 7.3.4 or 8.x 8i still... Don't get me wrong, they were great, I cut my teeth on them, but....

Anyway..... honestly. I'm gonna start the study soon.

Actually, I'll start a new entry for that, this one's pretty long as it is. You wanna get your money's worth after all...

OK, so, study time, what have I learnt in this fancy new environment I'm in (see previous post...), and what do I need to learn.... hmmm, maybe go over what I know first...

Lets look at the 10g Exam details again, remembering I'm studying for 10g OCP before tackling OCM. So I'll buzz over that in a day or so, knock off the exam for OCP, finish up studying for OCM and get fully Gurufied by August...

OK, now back to reality. 10gOCP.

I'd already looked at the privileged connection options, now lets look at the "General High Availability Technology", which I think sounds weird, coz it's a fuzzy type of HA, it's highly available technology because you don't have to stop people working because of other people stuffing up... Which I spose makes it available... ok.

Now's when I bring out my secret weapon... the wiki.

I've been working with some new people over here, (obviosly, since I'm 10,000km's away from anyone I know...), and one consultant here, showed me his wiki, sounds rude I know but bare with me here... (crickey, another rude pun.;-)

I'm sure you know what a wiki is by now, if not, google it and you'll get 667 million responses, (just a bit of info about it...) I never liked the idea, I thought it was just another internet fad. But here was a website sitting on his local machine that he used as his knowlege repository.. I'd ask him a question, and he'd say, "I remember something about that..." and jump to his... what would you call it, his brain overflow?

I thought "how cool is that", I mean, my brain's full as it is, and here I am trying to cram more in like a sucker...

So I've just downloaded and installed (bashed and bruised as I am) this wiki site.
Now, as I go through this research, I'll be putting the relevant
links and notes in my wiki, coz you and I both know this research thing
will not be a quick process. (If people are interested, I'll post some screen shots later as the wiki becomes populated...)

I've even got a subversion repository in there, so now when I go to client sites, I can keep an eye on the critical conf files and what's changed... pretty cool. (TANGENT, get back on track Gavin...)

Alright, so next entry in my wiki, (it looks cool too, I call it "TheFridgeDoor", coz I'm going to keep my running list of things to do on it...like my fridge...tangent...I'm just a little excited about it...)

Ok, time to tick things off.

General High Availability Technology
    Explain the Oracle Flashback feature
    Describe Resumable Space Allocation

Now we're cooking on gas...

Just on a side note, I'm Australian, therefore I say Australian things, I've realised (being in a non-english speaking country) that people can get confused by Australian colloquialisms.. If you're reading these blogs and have no idea what I just said, let me know ;-)

I'm usually pretty good at remembering stuff, like phone numbers and useless information, but for the life of me, I keep forgetting how to post new stories to this blog...

Which is different to my other problem of not actually posting stuff. I know, maybe if I post more, I won't forget the process of posting, makes sense...

So this is a reminder to me... It's the "news" link... :-)

Alrighty then, onto the exam study, remember, it's the 10gOCP Upgrade Exam that I'm doing, so no advanced replication unfortunately Charles... :-)
BTW, if you are studying, and you're stuck on something like Advanced Replication, let me know and I'll post it up and we can discuss...


Oracle LogMiner Enhancements
[  ]     Explain LogMiner new features: DDL statement support, dictionary staleness detections, ability to use an online dictionary, ability to skip log corruptions

I have never used LogMiner in anger, so a little bit of research is needed... let's start here.

If you're studying along with me, spend some time reading through, remember what the exam question is focussing on... new features.

Time to update my wiki! (I had to rebuild it after reformatting my laptop, but it's up and running again with all the info reloaded...)

It seems that everywhere you turn, every man and his dog is writing about their experience at Oracle OpenWorld 2006. Who they met, what they saw. There's even blow-by-blow descriptions from people like OTN's Justin Kestelyn who thought it would be funny by blogging every day of the conference for us poor chumps who weren't there. Aargh!

It made me feel better reading about Laurent Schneider's horror arrival in SF... I'm not bitter, not at all!

Nah, just kidding.

Anyway. I called this entry "No I wasn't at OOW..." coz I wasn't going to blog about my Openworld experience, so I'd better stop talking about it.

On to the study.

This Logminer stuff is quite interesting. Although I'm not 100% on what the exam details determine as "dictionary staleness detections". Any ideas anyone...  It's obviously talking about the ability of logminer to translate the binary values into names using the dictionary, whether it be flatfile, redo or online catalog. But detecting it? hmmm.

Anyway. I've read all I want about logminer, so we'll tick it off for now. Surely there's not too many questions in the OCP that relate to this specific new feature of the database.... ;-)

Oracle LogMiner Enhancements

Explain LogMiner new features.

I must be a glutten for punishment, the other day a colleague of mine mentioned there was an eBusiness AppsTech OCP, so what do I do.... start researching it. I've updated my wiki with a new set of pages and all..How about doing one thing at a time Gavin...

Then there's the RedHat certification I'm doing in a few weeks... It's a training course that happens to have the RHCT exam at the end.

There's something wrong with me I'm sure. Why do I want to get these qualifications, I'm not going for a job, I'm not going for a promotion, I like what I do, what is it? Only the geeky know what the hell they mean. (No offense ;-) )

And then I think to myself things like "it's fun", "you like challenging yourself", "you can do it" *said like Rob Schneider from The Waterboy *

Oh well. Study.

I've decided for the OCP exam, since it is a "New Features" exam, to just read through the 10g and 9i New features books (thanks to Marc for making me realise it's new features since 8i...) and then check off in one hit the Exam Topics.

Which looks remarkably like my wiki :)



I think that's the best way to do it.. Anyone, anyone?

OK, so not exactly, but close.

A few people have been hassling me to update what I'm up to, so let's start from the end of the last blog.

It was a fine December morning...

Went on the RedHat System Administration training, which included the RHCT exam at the end. I'm kinda lucky, I've been working on AIX and Linux for the past 7 years, and quite often have to get my hands dirty with Sysadmin stuff. So the course content wasn't completely new to me.

4 days brushing up on linux "stuff" and a 1 day exam. I won't go into exam details here... you'll have to go through it yourself to find out. But lets just say, out of the 10 people doing the exam, 5 bombed out in the first section, therefore failing the exam, 5 made it through to the second section. Yours truly ended up getting 100% for the first section, and 100% for the second section! sweet.

So now I'm an RHCT. RedHat Certified Technician. Where's my red Fedora!

Then, after 4 weeks of lounging around on holidays, getting through post-Christmas fatness and stuff, I find myself on a plane to Hong Kong, where I have 4 weeks to get a major project up and running for their pilot testing and development environments, just a little bit of work...

3 eBusiness Suites, 2 Portals, 2 OID's, 1 Collab Suite and a partridge in a pear tree later. I land back in Perth.

And here I am. Not sure for how long, but we'll see how it goes.

Back to OCP study. Talking of study, I was just reading back my last blog entry, trying to figure out what I know and don't know (yes, you'd think I'd know that...) and realised my last entry gave the wrong Exam Topics link. I should be doing this one as I'm 8i OCP. Almost a disaster.... :-)

I'm assuming those people still sticking with me and reading my Blog (with it's very sporadic nature of posting) are either full on dedicated DBA's, waiting for triumph or failure at the end of this little experiment of mine, or you put this feed in your blog feeder and every time you see an update from me, kick yourself for not getting rid of this blog from the list last time.. :-)

Either way, you're here and I've got you for a minute or two.

I have a question for you, doesn't matter which of the above reader you are:

When was the last time you challenged yourself?

Whether it was as big a challenge such as change of careers, or small, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator twice a week?

hmmm?

I like challenges, don't know why, they stress me out most of the time. I just did a google search on "challenge yourself", and found a blog post from a guy called Dwipal. His post on challenging yourself kinda explains it for me..

"...Short term challenges create a sense of tension in us, and when they are achieved, we feel happy. They also keep us busy and minds occupied until they are resolved...."


I don't think I would have lasted this long as a DBA if I was the type to accept a way of doing something and not change (how many DBA's do you know like that...).

Which leads me to the title of this blog :-) Another challenge!

There was an email blast from Oracle University this morning about the New Oracle Expert Program. A series of exams that recognize specialist DBA's. They include:

• Oracle Database 10g: Managing Oracle on Linux Certified Expert
• Oracle Database 10g: Real Application Clusters Administrator Certified Expert
• Oracle 11i Workflow Certified Expert
• Oracle 11i System Administrator Certified Expert
  

If you're thinking, "oh yay, another way for Oracle to get money from me..." , then I'm not sure why you're reading my blog.... that's not the point of the exams, or of this blog.

So anyway. Those that are like me, and enjoy a challenge, take a look. Those that don't want to give money to the Man, fine.. don't.


Let me know if you're interested or are planning to go for any of them. I'd like to hear how it goes, how you're going to get ready for it. Stuff like that.

Or, better yet, instead of me droning on about my lack of preparation for exam type stuff, someone write a blog entry for me on going for one of the exams... the trepidation leading up, the euphoria of thinking you know the answers, the nervous sweat you seem to break into as you press the "Finished" button....

Going off track again. I was reading in the AustralianIT News site about "Laptop Lock Down". (I get annoyed having to follow links in blogs, so to summarise it's about security of confidential data on laptops and mobile PCs/Blackberries...)

Being a Consultant, I have several clients across APAC, who would be kinda annoyed if I told them their technical design for their production eBusiness Suite is in some dodgy person's hands...

So I've started using this encrypted filesystem program TrueCrypt, which allows you to create an encrypted file and mount it as a filesystem when unlocked.

Awesome, it means when I get to a client, I mount the drive and all my stuff is there.

And if the laptop goes missing, I don't have to stress about client data falling into the wrong hands. As far as I know, it'd take a while to break through 256 bit AES encryption algorith with SHA-1 Hashing to boot.

Truecrypt is Open Source too which is cool.

OK, back on topic... OCM stuff.

Let's look at the environment which is used in the OCM exam.

Software Environment

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3 operating system, Oracle Database 10g 10.1.0.4, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control 10.1.0.3 are used during the exam.
• Participants can choose to work in either Linux and Oracle CLI or GUI environment when available during the exam.
• Candidates will also have access to a complete, non-searchable Oracle documentation set.
  

Time to blow the dust off the VMWare image I started creating.

Basically, I'm going to create an image which includes RHEL3 installed with no "Oracle-ization" done at all, but with all the rpms and Oracle software required to create the environment described above. With a separately staged Oracle Doco CD with the searching turned off.

Then, after each scenario, I can revert to the original snapshot, and start again.

The only issue is stuff like when RAC get's involved, that should be fun.

Anybody got any ideas for that one...apart from bouncing the nearest clients production RAC environment to run a test :-)

Just a quick update for those of you that don't keep on eye on new blogs starting @ Oracle, Paul and the team at Oracle Certification have started blogging over here.

Should be an interesting blog to keep an eye on, especially for all those people that found my blog while looking to get Oracle Certified and needing encouragement. I know I've slackened off lately, but I'll be reading it to get back into the swing of getting certified. You should too.

Gavin