Sweat the Exam; Reap the Rewards

By Joe McKee

Oracle Certified Masters Program tests Oracle professionals' mettle.

As new versions of Oracle Database have evolved to meet customer demands, so have the Oracle University (OU) programs that educate aspiring database administrators (DBAs). Jim DiIanni, certification director for Oracle Certification Programs, says the newest addition to the Oracle DBA Certification track—Oracle Certified Masters (OCM)—is in keeping with the changing demands of the industry. "The industry is adopting the stance that 'If I'm going to be hiring professionals, I need to know whether they can do the job, not whether they can memorize some material,'" he says.

Eligibility for taking the test and achieving OCM status requires students to complete the Oracle9i Database Administrator Certified Professional (OCP) track, along with two advanced DBA courses within the categories of database applications, performance management, advanced networking and replication, database and data management, advanced Oracle security, high availability, and data warehouse and large-scale databases. Add to that four to five years of hands-on DBA work experience, and students are ready for the OCM challenge.

At this writing, just 50 people have successfully completed the OCM practicum. To put that figure into perspective, consider that 120,000 IT professionals have completed Oracle DBA certification since OU began offering certification tracks back in 1997.

Next Steps GET CERTIFIED oracle.com/education/certification/ dba9i_ocmcourses.html Before you attempt the Oracle certified Master practicum, you must complete the Oracle9i DBA Oracle certified Professional credential. Explore oracle.com for more information on the OCM credential, including prerequisite courses in advanced database administration. LEARN more about the people who've already made the grade /ocm

Two of the first OCMs—Torsten Reichert, senior database administrator at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, based in Houston, Texas, and Dan Norris, senior consultant at Celeritas Technologies, LLC, based in Overland Park, Kansas—brought interesting backgrounds to the OCM practicum. Norris was part of the OCM beta program, which made him an OCM test subject. Reichert, who completed OCM certification in April 2003, is a self-taught database guru who never formally studied computer science.

"I studied extensively for the OCM practicum and even built a Linux server at home to run practical tests and train myself on what I thought they would test on," says Reichert. "After listening closely to what they said during the exam introduction, there was a hard moment where I realized this is no joke. You really have to show what you can do, and there's no way you'll survive this exam if you haven't done similar hands-on work in the past."

It's not only the rigors of highly complex scenarios that make the OCM practicum so intense; it's also the minutes ticking away. As the seconds slip by during the test scenarios, each participant has to complete a number of tasks and prepare an end statement. With Norris taking part in the OCM beta pilot, he had the added stress of knowing the test mentors were studying his progress to verify the effectiveness of the OCM program.

"Nobody explained to me how to prepare for this exam, so all I really had to go on was a fairly compact list of eight or nine topic areas the people who were designing the test had put together," says Norris. "Still, I never would have expected to be able to just read a document and get an understanding. I prepared by sitting down with a couple of systems, built a few databases, tore them up in as many ways as I could, and then began figuring out how to put them back together again."

According to Oracle's DiIanni, OU started the OCM program with one goal in mind: "We wanted to maintain the value and credibility of the Oracle certification credential, and to do that, we needed to raise the bar and begin testing for an individual's true competency." DiIanni estimates that approximately 300 of the world's top DBAs will receive their OCM credential each year.

To find the nearest testing center, go to oracle.com/education/certification.