I got my first Oracle Certification

So after years of toying with the idea of getting a certification and reading about the benefits I finally decided to make the push. In the past i have studied for exams and then for one reason or another never made the move to a 'Professional Certification' by a vendor.

Some people are not to fussed on certifications and possibly this is due to the number of years of experience they have,  so when looking for jobs this will outway the need to be certified.

My new role in Managed Service company puts a large emphasis on getting certified and provide time and support so i was quite excited to take the challenge. Working for an Oracle Partner  has its benefits around exam vouchers, access to training as well as other things so this also made the steps quite easy.

Back when i made the move to a D.B.A i attended an Oracle University cource on Oracle Admin I for 10gR2 so that took care of the approved courses requirement. I also thought this would be the best place to start as i should already know the material, little did i know how much I hadn't used since then. The exam was 1Z0-042 -  Oracle Database 10g: Administration I .

I bought 'Oracle Database 10g OCP Certification All-in-One Exam Guide' and read and made notes on the first half of the book. Then i took every test exam i could before booking an appointment with Perasonvue and took the exam at the local approved test centre, passed on the frist attempt. The questions were not what i had expected and nothing like the exams in the book !!

I then had to back track a little and take the 1Z0-007 -  Introduction to Oracle9i SQL exam. Your probably wondering why take a SQL exam on 9i, well the reason was I already had the exam study guide in hardback copy from when i first started working with Oracle and also because it was still a valid exam.

This exam was non-proctored so i was able to take it at home but that didn't make it a lot easier. So many of the fuctions which on a day to day basis you would look up quickly you can certainly get caught up in checking your notes and lose track of time. I took the approach of leaving the lengthy questions until the end when i had spare time. Exam Passed and look what i got :)

It won't stop here though as OCP is the next step, then upgrading this to 11g and 12c. Oracle R12 will be next and also trying to pick up some opn specializations.