OCM/RAC

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03-20-2002, 09:51 AM
julian

Just completed the first OCM ILT course: 9i:RAC. This was the first RAC ILT in Europe, still very few people attended the course. It was nice to play with RAC for 3 days, almost same as OPS except the great Cache Fusion improvement. I liked very much starting and stopping all instances with a single command (SRVCTL) using the spfile. I did some RMAN backups too. I have also attended before the OPS ILT course. There is not much difference except that very liitle is stressed on tuning in monitoring RAC compared to OPS. There are several changes in the dynamic views related to OPS/RAC: V$PING, V$LOCK_ACTIVITY, etc. Next is 9i: Advanced PL/SQL.

Oracle has not yet decided what kind of exam there will be for OCM.
03-20-2002, 02:25 PM
jmodic

Quote:

Originally posted by julian
Oracle has not yet decided what kind of exam there will be for OCM.

It's funny Oracle has allready awarded first Oracle Certified Masters more than three months ago.

However recognising (from the picture in recent Oracle Magazine) at least three of six people that had recieved first OCM titles I don't think they realy demanded from them to attend any of the OCM ILT courses (well, maybe as the lecturers, certainly not as "pupils"), neither they demanded from them to attend any exams (well, maybe they are participating as the coauthors of the OCM exams). Those first OCM's are realy some of the Oracle-outsiders top experts worldwide.
03-20-2002, 02:42 PM
Shestakov

Quote:

Originally posted by julian
J I liked very much starting and stopping all instances with a single command (SRVCTL) using the spfile.

I like this utility to.
But it has little problem. If we have listeners with dynamic instance registrations, then this utility can't recognize listeners. And doesn't matter we describe listeners (LOCAL_LISTENER/REMOTE_LISTENER) in init.ora or not.
SRVCTL - read and parse only listener.ora file.
03-20-2002, 05:24 PM
ehaskins

My 2 cents on the first OCMs...

One of them was Dr. Paul Dorsey who has written many books for Oracle Press on subjects such as Developer, Designer, and JDeveloper. Paul is the President of Dulcian, Inc., a Consultancy based in New Jersey. I worked for Paul a few years back, so I know him personally. As he is an extremely bright and talented database designer...he has no DBA experience at all. He would be completely lost if asked to restore a database or even determine why a database connection failed. I don't mean to bash him...I have considerable respect for him. Rather, I bash Oracle for selecting him as an Honorary OCM. Paul isn't even an OCP. He's never taken an Oracle exam...and he is strongly against the notion of certification. He doesn't require or suggest that any of his employees waste their time with OCP. That's why it seemed VERY ODD to me that he was included!!

Which brings me back to an earlier point...isn't the current OCM designed for the DBA Track?????
03-20-2002, 05:41 PM
jmodic

I don't know Paul Dorsey (at least not personally), but I know Dave Ensor, Jonathan Lewis and Rich Niemiec, the three other first-to-be OCMs. And I can guarantie, they certainly deserve that title! Without any ILTs and/or exams. Those people realy know Oracle database right into the guts. At least Dave and Jonathan deserve their OCM title solely because of their books, if not for anything else (I've allready written couple of times how I dislike Rich's book, so I wouldn't credit him OCM based on his writing skills :D).

So Paul Dorsey might be an exception to that rule, but I will incredibly respect anyone who will be able to present himself as a OCM, a peer-to-peer with such capacities as Dave Ensor or Jonathan Lewis! Which can not be said of how I (dis)respect an OCP title, which IMHO has greatly lost its credibility. But that is another story, I hope it will not happen to OCM program too....
03-20-2002, 07:05 PM
pando

Jonathan Lewis is truly amazing... and Steve Adams as well
It's hard to believe that not being Oracle insider they can understand so well Internals and many times Jonathan shows how much he knows (in my opinion much more than metalink analysts) in Metalink forum
Or Jonathan has worked for Oracle?

I guess my favourite three gurus so far is S. Adams, T. Kyte and J. Lewis in one hand of their books and the other of their websites

James Moorle seems excellent too but pitty he hasnt got a website
03-20-2002, 07:30 PM
jmodic

Quote:

Originally posted by pando
I guess my favourite three gurus so far is S. Adams, T. Kyte and J. Lewis in one hand of their books and the other of their websites

Pando, wee seem to have very similar (if not identical) taste when it comes to Oracle gurus....
03-21-2002, 01:29 AM
julian

Hold on your horses! Jurij, they are OCMs but they are "old OCMs". The old OCM programme was symbolic, it required that you have taught or attended 2 or more courses depending on the OCM title. There were 6 different paths.

The new OCM programme is just being started. It will have an exam at the end but they are still thinking in Oracle how to implement this exam. It will not be in production untill summer.

The new OCM programme is meant only for 9i certified DBAs.

BTW: Forms 9i will be out in 3 months or so and 9i Release 3 will come but probably Oracle Marketing will give it a new name.
03-21-2002, 04:33 AM
jmodic

Quote:

Originally posted by julian
Hold on your horses! Jurij, they are OCMs but they are "old OCMs".

No, they are "new OCMs"! New certification scheme was officially announced in OracleWorld in San Francisco. There first certified OCPs were publicly awarded their certificates. In addition also "first Oracle Masters were introduced by Oracle's John Hall" (quote from Oracle magazine, there have been 6 OCM titles awarded, you can take a look at those 6 gurus in Oracle Magazine). Also, Rich Niemeiec has a column in the same magazine that writes about that event.

Certainly, they have recieved their titles "Oracle Certified Master" under the new OCM programme. And obviously they have recieved it without taking their ILTs and exams.

BTW, where have your ILT course taken place? In Reading, UK?
03-21-2002, 04:52 AM
julian

Quote:

Certainly, they have recieved their titles "Oracle Certified Master" under the new OCM programme. And obviously they have recieved it without taking their ILTs and exams.

Oh yes! You are right Jurij, they are new OCMs but they are hohored OCMs (see page 22, bottom right). The difference is between a Ph.D. and an honored Ph.D. They have not taken the practicum exam (it simply does not exist yet).

Quote:

BTW, where have your ILT course taken place? In Reading, UK?

Helsinki. The first 9i: RAC ILT course was in Helsinki. The first RAC ILT course in Reading (in UK) will start on May 27th.
03-21-2002, 06:29 AM
TimHall

I hate the concept of honorary awards of any kind. I don't care how good the people are, if they didn't pass the exams they don't deserve the certification. I know these guys know Oracle inside-out but for all we know they might freak out in the exams and fail.

At both my degree and PhD graduations honorary degrees were given. One was to a racing driver. I totally dispised my university for doing this. Everyone in the room except this person had spent years working for sod-all money, yet he got the same bit of paper for driving a car and getting millions of pounds.

I think any honorary titles only server to lessen the status of the certification, no matter who the people are!!!

In this case it's even more of a joke since the finialized OCM track has not been announced yet.

Does anyone want an honorary TCM certification. It's a Tim Certified Master and is the equivalent of OCM x 10. I've not decided what you have to do to get it but if you kiss my ass you can have one for free :)
03-21-2002, 06:59 AM
julian

I feel the same Tim. Probably, I say probably, the honored OCMs were given to Niemiec et al. for writing several papers and books on Oracle. I was reading page 22 of Oracle Magazine, namely Rich's step by step advice on how to become Oracle guru and didn't know if I should laugh or cry.

The last step is: Become certified as an OCM. Well, I am hardly fainting with admiration the way some people have completed it!
03-21-2002, 09:48 AM
ehaskins

Tim,

I'm up for the TCM Program! Let me know...maybe OraKnowledge could help provide training / preparation for the same ;-)
03-22-2002, 10:06 AM
julian

According to

http://oracle.oreilly.com/news/openworld_day4_1201.html

Oracle plans to set the bar such that only about 1% of Oracle DBAs attain the master-level certification.
03-22-2002, 02:08 PM
eyen

I thought that the OCM exam would be a test against a actual server. What I mean by that is test takers would show up at a "testing lab" fix a problem based off a scenario on a server. Then some proctor would grade your solution.

Comment on the limiting the OCM to 1% of the total OCPs. I think that was a number from a rumor.

I had a chance to talk to the Oracle Education person in charge of the OCP and she said that the OCM is so "work in progress" that I should not worry about it till its post on the website.

They (Oracle) don't know what it (the exam) is going to be so lets not scare ourselves. Knowing Oracle the test is going to be hard enough. Lets not psych ourselves out by adding to the hype.

E. Yen
OCP DBA 8, 8i, 9i