Oracle Database Certifications Are No Longer Permanent

jfruh writes: It used to be that you could get an Oracle database certification and declare yourself Oracle-certified for the rest of your career. That time is now over, causing a certain amount of consternation among DBAs. On the one hand, it makes sense that someone who's only been certified on a decade-old version of the product should need to prove they've updated their skills. On the other, Oracle charges for certification and will definitely profit from this shift."

Comments

Your firstborn

[Anonymous Coward]

... that's what Oracle services cost. Maybe in time you'll need to indenture two children to them to be able to afford them :)

Re:Your firstborn

[Anonymous Coward]

As you can have only one firstborn, this approach wouldn't work.

Re:Your firstborn

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Clearly you don't know Oracle. The cost has always been your soul.

Re:Your firstborn

[binarylarry]

Clearly YOU don't know Oracle.

Oracle's primary fee is your *dignity* of course.

Re:Your firstborn

[davester666]

now it's 1 child every couple of years. Larry has an insatiable appetite for babies...

Key question

[abhisri]

Will the DBAs actually need to take the test again and again, each time to keep their certification?
Else all this is going to prove is whether you paid the tithe to oracle or not.

Re:Key question

[gl4ss]

presumably.

or else you could maybe sue them for changing the contract retroeffectively? get your money back?

Re:Key question

[Z00L00K]

A certification doesn't make you a good DBA. It only tells the employer that you have understood some basics.

A good DBA is able to see what the best solution is for the company and the product it delivers. It's way more important to understand the demands the product have on the database than anything else.

Re:Key question

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found the certifications to be counterproductive - the better you are with the oracle product, the worse your test score.

The tests are comprised of 50% marketing lies and 50% things that you should never do or are just plain wrong.

The only way to study for them is the Gorge & Puke method - hope you retain it long enough to pass the test, then purge yourself!

Re:Key question

[Virtucon]

So that means you're not certified then?

Re:Key question

[IndustrialComplex]

It doesn't work like that. You would still have your certification. But it would be the old certification. What Oracle will do is issue their new improved updated latest whizbang certification 2.0.

So you would have your DBA certification, and it would still be exactly what it always was, but you would not have the DBA 2.0 certification.

Re:Key question

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say the same for Cisco certification. I am not certified, but I work with their products almost on a daily basis that I feel I could easily pass as a CCNA.

Re:Key question

[MightyMartian]

Else all this is going to prove is whether you paid the tithe to oracle or not.

I thought that's what certifications were pretty much for.

Re:Key question

[jedidiah]

Pretty much.

They might impress idiots that aren't competent to judge your skills. That's great if you want to work for people like that. Otherwise it's a waste of time and money that could be used more effectively even in terms of professional development.

The idea that a 15 year old cert isn't worth anything anymore is not really a surprising or newsworthy thing. It's hardly something for Slashdot to get excited about.

It must be a slow news day.

Re:Key question

[cayenne8]

Actually, so far...I've not found any jobs that required any Oracle DBA certification as a requirement for work. Maybe for starting out, but for me, job resume experience is what sells you.

I've never been certified, I've taken the classes in the past, but never got around to taking the actual exam, and I've never found it to be a job requirement, nor pay amount factor.

I'm pretty much contracting only these days, so maybe the more beginner W2 jobs value this more, but for now, I find that in general, Oracle Certs are about as worthless as MS certified engineer credentials. You just don't need them really.

Re:Key question

[Anonymous Coward]

"A certification doesn't make you a good DBA. It only tells the employer that you have understood some basics."

Nope sadly it doesn't even prove that! What it means is you can remember a set of questions and answers and quote them verbatim. I'd been working as an Oracle DBA for close on 15 years before I bothered to take my certs. I read the cert guide books, passed the practice tests. I then got hold of a lot of test questions to make sure I knew what to expect. When I took the real certs test 90% of the questions I had practiced on where in the test! 80 questions took me just under 9 mins to answer ( they give you 90 minutes! ) and I got 100% pass rate! It's an excuse for Oracle to make money and it gives a false impression of your abilities with a technology. I once met a certified Oracle OCP who asked me what the difference was between old style rollbacks the then new UNDO's! FFS! This is basic shit people need to know, he probably did the same as me, simply read the questions and memorised the answers just to pass a test to gain a cert to look good on his CV. Difference was I had done 15 years in production environments before I took my cert.

Re:Key question

[StevenMaurer]

It's pretty much like this: http://search.dilbert.com/comi...

Re:Key question

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel I could easily pass as a CCNA.

Anyone with the cert would tell you otherwise... but then again, they did buy into the whole boondoggle

Re:Key question

[CheshireDragon]

Maybe.
I work in a Cisco environment, but have no CCNA. They don't give a damn if I have a CCNA. They asked if I can troubleshoot and come to a resolution in reasonable time.
Been doing it 7yrs now.

Re:Key question

[jgarry]

Actually, so far...I've not found any jobs that required any Oracle DBA certification as a requirement for work. Maybe for starting out, but for me, job resume experience is what sells you.

I've never been certified, I've taken the classes in the past, but never got around to taking the actual exam, and I've never found it to be a job requirement, nor pay amount factor.

I'm pretty much contracting only these days, so maybe the more beginner W2 jobs value this more, but for now, I find that in general, Oracle Certs are about as worthless as MS certified engineer credentials. You just don't need them really.

Oracle Partners jobs require certs. This is of course all marketing, but marketing is lucrative.

Give me $5.000

[Ivan Stepaniuk]

And I will certify your competence in anything. (Signed piece of paper included)

Re:Give me $5.000

[AchilleTalon]

Exactly! Most certifications are just scam and pieces of paper to cover the ass of HR guys hiring without having a clue about the skills they are looking for. A convenient way to tell the boss they picked someone with the right technical skills, in theory. Taxes on revenues from governments are not enough, some companies managed to make their own.

Re:Give me $5.000

[Richard_at_work]

I agree with you when it comes to third party certification courses, but not when its the company certifying you in its own products - they have a vested PR interest to not endorse people who can't do the job.

Re:Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but to be fair experience on a CV usually equates to number of years a person has been able to bullshit through their previous job.

Frankly almost everyone is fairly dull - if you think you're the exception, you're probably even less talented than those around you - and the majority misrepresent themselves, whether because they're outright liars or because they have an inflated sense of their ability and/or contribution to previous projects.

And, yeah, I'm in HR. I value long probationary periods - paid, of course, but at a lower rate while training is provided: IOW I care more about your reasoning skills than buzzwords on your resume. This also means that I do respect a background which implies eclectic skillset, though don't expect me to look for what you think fits best: if you're a self-taught programmer who demonstrates an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science, but your academic background is in World History, my interest will be very clearly piqued. If you're a seasoned systems software engineer whose background is entirely in software engineering, my first question will be: what that is new can you bring to us?

I especially value good ethics - this one's underrated by many companies, and sometimes one has to be careful not to be seen by some convoluted reasoning as discriminatory, but in brief: if you're here to make a quick buck and leave, or to use your colleagues as stepping stones, I'll try damn hard to make sure you're never hired, or quickly removed. (OTOH, if you're willing to work your ass off, expect to be rewarded not just in cash but in job security: employees gradually gain a share of the business with years worked, and are sufficiently involved in various policies that laying off for short-term profiteering would never happen unless the employees suddenly decide to majority vote against their own interest.)

Re:Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

And, yeah, I'm in HR.

You are part of the problem with the hiring process these days. Human resources is staffed by idiots lead by a fool. Companies don't want the best person, they want the least expensive person. Human resources filters out the people whom should be hired.

Re:Give me $5.000

[gl4ss]

oh is that why projects with oracle certified people don't have huge cost overruns regularly?

Re:Give me $5.000

[Charliemopps]

I agree with you when it comes to third party certification courses, but not when its the company certifying you in its own products - they have a vested PR interest to not endorse people who can't do the job.

You don't work with Oracle do you?
Their primary marketing slogan is: "Shut the fuck up and give us your money"

Re:Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that some HR staff are awful, therefore all HR staff are awful?

Now, should I quit the field and leave it to people who, like you say, "want the least expensive person", or should I strive to set a good example within the field - or, at the very least, create a palatable environment for those working around me?

As to "the best person", any recruiter who tells you that you can rank people and identify a single best candidate is almost certainly lying. There will be loads of inadequate people, a few good people, and even fewer who stand out, but among those standing out, any of the people chosen may give a different but equally valuable contribution.

(I don't even like the term "HR" - "personnel" was much better - but it's the label people use.)

Re:Give me $5.000

[Hognoxious]

I don't even like the term "HR" - "personnel" was much better

Another one. You must be due to retire soon.

Re: Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

The person with the history academic background will likely be like all of the Ruby and JavaScript "programmers" out there. They can throw together basic scripts, but to hell with considering algorithmic complexity, performance, security, maintainability, scalability, robustness, and stuff like that.

The person with the comp. sci. or engineering background will at least be aware of such things. Success isn't guaranteed when dealing with these people, but it's much more likely than when dealing with those who are self-taught or educated in a different field.

Re:Give me $5.000

[LordLimecat]

Cost overruns are not a DBA or engineering issue, theyre a management issue.

Re:Give me $5.000

[pla]

If you're a seasoned systems software engineer whose background is entirely in software engineering, my first question will be: what that is new can you bring to us?

How about, Able to do the fucking job without a "long probationary period ... while training is provided"? That do it for ya, hmm? No, no, you'd rather have your interest "piqued" than get a qualified boring individual to do the job your employer wants done.

I realize what we do can often look like magic to those with no math or computer skills, but really, don't insult me by explaining how your AP reconciliation process differs from every other special unique snowflake of an accounting department.


I especially value good ethics - this one's underrated by many companies

No, you don't. You value someone who looks ethical, but when the CFO tells him to "interpret" the numbers more favorable, he shuts up and does as directed. You value someone who, when your DB breaks, he puts you at the head of the queue instead of following standard prioritization rules for the company. In short, just like all the other HR folks who tout "diversity" and "ethics" - You want a shiny facade, but couldn't care less about the reality.


if you're here to make a quick buck and leave, or to use your colleagues as stepping stones, I'll try damn hard to make sure you're never hired, or quickly removed.

Although they exist, I find it somewhat funny you would mention that in the context of engineers. Unlike in the HR and corporate food chains, engineers have a problem in exactly the opposite direction - When management (almost without exception) proves itself as incompetent asshats, we get the job done despite (sometimes in direct contradiction to) what management thinks it wants. On the whole, engineers have a massively overdeveloped sense of meritocracy, unfortunately an ideal largely incompatible with "obey the most expensive suit".

Yeah, we probably wouldn't get along well.

Re: Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont tell too many secrets to this asshole - they will be used AGAINST you.

Re: Give me $5.000

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...or perhaps that person went through SICP and stuff because he wasn't forced to do Java in a CS college and heard that SICP was better.

Re: Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that a few undergrad course credits in "algorithmic complexity, performance, security, maintainability, scability, robustness AND stuff life that" is going to make you an expert on any of the above, you overestimate your own ability. My field is HR, but I have one undergraduate degree in computing, another in mathematics, and postgrad is all maths. I also have over ten years of experience as a software developer. I know how to do all the college style programming/compsci quizzes. I know how to set them. I've tutored people. (I'm quite old.) I also know that they won't tell me much about whether you're going to make a positive contribution or not - if you're hopeless at such challenges, you're out, but being brilliant at that sort of thing isn't indicative of your being a more productive worker than someone who is merely quite good. Even Google has come to understand (FINALLY) that there's only so much you can learn from pretending you're a Systems Security 101 Professor setting a pop quiz.

Now, if someone walks in with a PhD which implies substantial skill and experience in one or more of the above, I am of course especially interested. That's where your talent starts becoming unusual, and you needed more time than we're able to invest bringing you up to a particular level.

For example, "algorithmic complexity" is something I would expect anyone who works with us to be able to grasp at least in principle after being sat down for a few hours and chatted to. It's not a particularly tough to grasp concept. If you're self-taught, I would expect that at some point during your self-teaching you bought a copy of something like MIT's _Introduction to Algorithms_ and worked through enough of it (if you had, you'd already be doing better than quite a few formally taught computing grads who seem to have avoided or forgotten or never quite grasped anything hard!). If you showed me some of your code, you would also be able to describe how you optimised and secured it, and I would expect to hear formal principles. But at the same time I'd expect you to show me how you documented it clearly and concisely.

Re:Give me $5.000

[laie_techie]

And, yeah, I'm in HR. I value long probationary periods - paid, of course, but at a lower rate while training is provided: IOW I care more about your reasoning skills than buzzwords on your resume.

It's people like you that caused me to go through six months as an hourly employee, zero overtime allowed, no paid vacation, no PTO accumulation, no matching contributions to my 401(k), etc. During six months I could have accumulated over 60 hours of PTO, plus my official time as an employee starts after the six months when giving me the five years of service raise. I hate buzzwords as much as the rest, but you don't need a long probationary period to find out if an employee padded their CV.

Re:Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

How about, Able to do the fucking job without a "long probationary period ... while training is provided"? That do it for ya, hmm?

No, because nobody can immediately do anything non-trivial competently, let alone well.

I realize what we do can often look like magic to those with no math or computer skills, but really, don't insult me by explaining how your AP reconciliation process differs from every other special unique snowflake of an accounting department.

My academic background is mathematics and computing. I have a decade of software development experience, and five further years as a genericist founding and selling a vaguely popular e-commerce site. I am not a special snowflake - I merely try to do my job excellently. Your unwarranted self-importance is noted.

No, you don't. You value someone who looks ethical, but when the CFO tells him to "interpret" the numbers more favorable, he shuts up and does as directed. You value someone who, when your DB breaks, he puts you at the head of the queue instead of following standard prioritization rules for the company. In short, just like all the other HR folks who tout "diversity" and "ethics" - You want a shiny facade, but couldn't care less about the reality.

You're one of those people who has a bad experience with a black guy once and is racist for the rest of their lives, right?

Unlike in the HR and corporate food chains, engineers have a problem in exactly the opposite direction - When management (almost without exception) proves itself as incompetent asshats, we get the job done despite (sometimes in direct contradiction to) what management thinks it wants.

Your inflated sense of your own heroism is noted, as is your false generalisation from perhaps the experience in your workplace(s) to the millions of other workplaces across the planet.

Competent engineers are welcome to found their own businesses run entirely by specialist engineers, you know. They sometimes do, and sometimes even do an excellent job. As the business grows, they always have to hire specialists from other fields, as would be expected of any modern commercial environment. But what are you waiting for? Proceed!

. On the whole, engineers have a massively overdeveloped sense of meritocracy, unfortunately an ideal largely incompatible with "obey the most expensive suit".

By your post, only if "meritocracy" means "everyone ranked according to ability, with me at the top, of course".

Re:Give me $5.000

[frank_adrian314159]

On the whole, engineers have a massively overdeveloped sense of meritocracy, unfortunately an ideal largely incompatible with "obey the most expensive suit".

Well maybe, but it's a meritocracy based on principles somewhat socially orthogonal to the "real world", at least these days. I would think that adaptability to reality might be a bit higher on the "to do" lists of most engineers. Not to mention with all of the bad PR of "Gamergate" and how the "systemd" debate's been going, I think it can be safely said that engineering ranks are just as filled with politics and backbiting as all other corporate departments and that this "meritocracy" you speak of has either seen better days or is apocryphal.

The sad part of this is that no one seems to see that it is the business environment that's becoming ever more pathological and that the shrinking cages they've put you in (metaphorically, economically, and physically) are causing an ever-increasing struggle just to survive. Is "gamification" just another buzzword for "Make the workplace a new season of Survivor?"

Shrinking cages make biting rats of us all. It's the reptilian brain deep within us in action - and you won't get rid of that for at least a few more millennia of evolution, both social and physical. So you better get cracking on better control of your betters...

Re:Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not to primarily find out whether the employee padded their CV. It's to confirm that the employee is actually willing and able to operate in the present environment. Recall that this is a partly employee-owned business which guarantees by virtue of ownership structure atypical levels of security, responsibility and reward to employees. The employees are not just the business in terms of "we value our staff" but in terms of company direction, policy, and ultimately in law.

If want somewhere where you feel you've hit the ground running, but could also be fired at a moment's notice and are likely to leave anyway once the next carrot is dangled in front of you, you wouldn't be a good fit here.

Re:Give me $5.000

[MightyMartian]

Years ago I took one of the Windows server 2008 courses. While I did learn a bit on how to manage CAs in Windows, all in all, it was a tremendous waste of time; equal parts obvious crap and annoying horn tooting ("Windows Server 2008 is the best server operating system on the market today" was literally one of the statements in the intro). It was an utter joke and worst of all taught very little that couldn't be find in other, more definitive sources. At the end of the whole process, I decided that Microsoft certifications were in some ways more of a marketing ploy than educational tool.

Re:Give me $5.000

[David_W]

Their primary marketing slogan is: "Shut the fuck up and give us your money"

I thought it was "keep giving us your money until we say it is enough".

Re:Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that some HR staff are awful, therefore all HR staff are awful?

Not at all. He's implying that almost all colorectal cancer is terrible, but the operable kind which reveals a curable but otherwise even more life-threatening and fast acting disease. So you're like that. An unnecessary evil that occasionally, like a broken watch, happens to serve a purpose, even if you can't rely on it for anything important.

Re:Give me $5.000

[Anonymous Coward]

The ex Oracle consultant I once worked with (yes, actually employed at Oracle - Dreieich - Germany) told me that they were exactly one Google search ahead of their clients most of the time. I absolutely believe him.

Not a great loss...

[Jorgensen]

I am an Oracle Certified DBA, and I do not consider this a great loss.

For several reasons:

• My (then) employer paid for the certification
• I considered the certification test EASY. I had already been an Oracle DBA for about a year at the time (worked with Oracle products for about 5), and the test covered the stuff the manuals documented anyway. Anybody capable of digesting the Administrator's Manual should have no trouble on the test. The manuals were actually pretty good.
• The certification is tied to the Oracle RDBMS version number. So being certified on an older version is of limited value anyway. (I know: The base RDBMS doesn't really change that much, but they wrap all sorts of nonsense around it)
• Oracle is becoming increasingly irrelevant: MySQL (although now owned by Oracle too) takes the bottom end of the market share with ease, PostgreSQL the middle bit, and there are a lot fewer sales to be made at the high end.

Re:Not a great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just use SQLite, no server overhead so scales well!

Re:Not a great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

SQLite is mobilescale!

Re:Not a great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

The certification is tied to the Oracle RDBMS version number.

So why make it time limited as well?
It's not that you're suddenly not proficient anymore in version X when version X+1 or X+2 comes out.
This isn't just Oracle though, others do it just the same.

Re:Not a great loss...

[will_die]

Oracle already has the version in the name of the certificaton.
That certification is good for the lifeof the product what is changed with the time limit is that with an active Oracle certification you get access to software and some other services. If you don't keep the certification active you lose that access.
So my old Oracle DBA certification of Oracle 7 (15+ years old???) will no longer give me access to the web site and software unless I upgrade the cert however I am still certificated as an Oracle 7 DBA for as long as I want to claim it.

Re:Not a great loss...

[stonedead]

Oracle is becoming increasingly irrelevant: MySQL (although now owned by Oracle too) takes the bottom end of the market share with ease, PostgreSQL the middle bit, and there are a lot fewer sales to be made at the high end.

I agree with your other points but not this one. Where I come from, Oracle is still very much the King in the RDBMS world with no serious competitor(DB2 maybe?) whatsoever.

Re:Not a great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always tell the ones who've drank the kool-aid and are in too deep to admit it.

Re:Not a great loss...

[Hognoxious]

Does it use joins?

Re:Not a great loss...

[StormReaver]

Oracle is becoming increasingly irrelevant....

I snuck PostgreSQL into the organization in 2005 to handle certain Web activity. It worked great for years, and my boss later decided to use it for other projects that were slated to use Oracle. All of those projects were so maintenance free at the database end that we later decided to replace Oracle with PostgreSQL for all of our database needs.

We found that the Oracle "features" we paid for failed when they were needed most, and therefore didn't work as advertised. PostgreSQL's replication and standby features would have been good enough.

I use PostgreSQL for all of my low end needs, too. I tried MySQL off and on for years, and it is still a terrible database (alter the data to fit the contraints!) when data are important. Even more exciting, though, is that PostgreSQL is slowly adding high-end features into its core infrastructure. And those features adhere to the PostgreSQL ACID philosophy.

Re: Not a great loss...

[rkcth]

I agree with everything you said. I've converted to using PostgreSQL exclusively.

Re: Not a great loss...

[rkcth]

Yes, you can do joins and very complex queries, but it doesnt scale to multiple simultaneous users, it is very good and fast for a single user database. It's built into many programs.

Re:Not a great loss...

[tomhath]

Postgresql will soon own the low and middle end RDBMS market. Oracle and DB2 fight for the high end, but Postgresql and NoSQL databases are rapidly encroaching on that market too.

Re:Not a great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want cross-machine JOINs and multiple active writable nodes, then Oracle probably is the best. However, if you want all those things, then you should also be considering reworking your app so that you no longer need those things. Your app will be better for it, as will your bank balance after year 1.

Oracle's charging is based on the mantra "charge $1 less for the product than it'll cost to engineer it out". RAC is like crack - once you're on it, Oracle are very good at keeping you on it (mostly because most companies don't think longer than this year, and maybe next year). Re-engineering so you don't need RAC means you're free of Oracle's thumbscrews for ever - it'll cost you more this year, but next year (or the year after) you're way out in front.

Re:Not a great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do use this thing for a data analysis app and it sucks donkey balls. Better got with CSV flat files and do the joining and filtering yourself. That will be 100x faster in most cases (compared to a sqlite join over three tables and more than just five rows).

Re: Not a great loss...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Why SQLite when we can have Embedded Firebird?

Re:Not a great loss...

[gman003]

Left joins only, no right joins.

Re:Not a great loss...

[Slashdot Parent]

I'm not a database guy, but can't you rewrite a right join to be a left join, in the general case?

Re:Not a great loss...

[gman003]

Yes. That's why they haven't bothered implementing right joins, you can do every join using just inner joins, left outer joins and unions, like how any logical gate can be implemented with NAND gates.

I've never had need for a right join, and only rarely do I use a full outer join.

Re:Not a great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

A right join is just 3 left joins.

Re: Not a great loss...

[Hognoxious]

Well that explains it. If it uses joins it can't be webscale.

This is the norm in IT

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't like getting a degree in maths - IT changes significantly over a 3 to 5-year period and it seems reasonable that somebody presenting themselves as "certified" actually be certified in a version of the technology which isn't 10 years old.

"On the other, Oracle charges for certification and will definitely profit from this shift."

So do Cisco, Microsoft, Red Hat, NetApp and every other technology vendor I can think of. They all charge for the exams and the courses. Are you implying that shouldn't be the case?

The real problem is when they madate course attendance as VMware do - before you can sit your first VCP exam, you need to pay thousands for a 5-day VCP course to fulfil the prerequisites.

Re:This is the norm in IT

[AchilleTalon]

No, we imply when you are working with a product your CV should be enough to certify you are knowing it. Also, do you think a product change so much someone already certified with a older version cannot learn the new version quick enough to be productive? Were do you learn new versions of products if not in your working environment? Will the employers required to pay certifications for their employees each time they upgrade from a old version to a newer one? If yes, what is the difference between hiring someone with skills with a older version and then pay for the certification? What is the value of the certification at the end? This is bullshit, yes, even for Microsoft, Cisco and everyone else selling certifications.

Re:This is the norm in IT

[kronix2]

"No, we imply when you are working with a product your CV should be enough to certify you are knowing it."

Sounds like you've never recruited. The CV is used to filter out candidates who don't meet the requirements for the role, whether they're lacking experience, a qualification or the ability to write a comprehensible CV. The content of the CV is validated during the interview process - it's extremely rare that somebody gets a job offer based purely on the content of their CV. People lie about skills, experience and qualifications on their CVs.

"Also, do you think a product change so much someone already certified with a older version cannot learn the new version quick enough to be productive?"

Yes, which is why almost every major vendor requires recertification or a renewal exam after a roughly 3-year period. You've obviously not had the misfortune of having to untangle the mess an MCSE 2000 has made of a 2008 R2 or 2012 infrastructure.

"Were do you learn new versions of products if not in your working environment?"

When Oracle 12c came out, do you think every DBA deployed it into production or test so they could gain experience with 12c? It's not as simple as deciding you're going to deploy a new product into test for your own benefit. In many cases the onus is on the engineer to lab the technology themselves on their own equipment.

I think if we started calling them qualifications instead of certifications, this ridiculous attitude of "my MCSE from 2000 is just as valid as an MCSE 2012" would quickly disappear. In the real world, if you've got a 10-year-old IT qualification and have done nothing in the ensuing decade to keep yourself updated, that reflects poorly on you.

Certifications are a joke

[jellomizer]

Certification are just an excuse to get more money from people who have already paid for your product. It is an excuse to not offer proper training and documentation for your product in the first place.

Re:Certifications are a joke

[thegarbz]

Yes and no, sometimes, in some cases.

There's no doubt that some certification schemes are worthless.
There's also no doubt that in nearly all cases someone who hasn't done a certification can be in many ways better than someone who does based only on experience, reading, and figuring things out themselves.

But there are some cases where you want people to have a minimum level of competence and one of the easy ways for companies to offload the checking of this is to rely on certifications.
There's no doubt that Oracle makes money on this, but really that just brings them in line with everyone else. On the flip side a database is only as good as its setup ad administration and the poor setup and administration can make the original vendor look back. It's an arse covering exercise that can also be considered a cost of doing business with the vendor.

Re:Certifications are a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree.
They do have proper training and documentation. Certification ensures that someone isn't selling himself as proficient just because he has the manuals (unopened, securely locked away in a cabinet).

Certification is what tests or exams were at school - verifying, for yourself and for the world, that you followed the lessons and understood them.

Re:Certifications are a joke

[jedidiah]

All certification demonstrates is that someone is good at taking tests. They can cram and get a sufficiently good grade on something. They may or may not retain any useful information or actually understand anything.

It does show some degree of motivation though.

My own SCSA scores are misleading as I aced the section on vi and I hate vi. It just goes to show that a little cramming goes a long way.

The idea that someone with a cert actually "understands" something is just laughable wishful thinking. Probably self-serving too.

Same as everyone else

[bernywork]

Citrix, Microsoft, Cisco, Juniper.... They all do it, why not Oracle? A person who worked on Oracle 8 may or may not know about the extra features in data guard in V11......

Re: Same as everyone else

[Kvathe]

No no no, you've got the complete wrong idea. this an article about Oracle remember, Oracle is practically sign convention for bad business at this point, if any other companies emulate them then everyone must be doing it wrong.

Re:Same as everyone else

[will_die]

That is the case but I have been skating on my Oracle DBA certification from Oracle v7 for years now.

Re:Same as everyone else

[AK Marc]

Probably someone who was certified under 8 and worked continuously in the field is as up or more up on V11 than a newly certified person.

I got my MCSE back in the '90s, before there was all the stink about test dumps and such. Oh, and back that long ago, it had no expiration. So yes, MCSE for life. They later changed it, but since I didn't sign new ToS, I don't have to put any caveots, reservations, or expiration on it. The current Oracle guys can do the same.

I'm certified insane!

[Anonymous Coward]

The CEO job is the one for me!

ZZ Top said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimme all your money. Or was that the mugger?

So Oracle certifications just lost the 'D' in ACID

[tlambert]

So Oracle certifications just lost the 'D' in ACID ... that's just LOL!

Pay the man

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Larry's island pays for itself?

Most dbas dont certify its a waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Been a dba for 15 years. Only the lowest paying jobs care about certification. I dont know anyone who wastes money on this. Companies never pay for it. Its a waste of money. No one checks either. You can just lie. Its mainly the low end pmps who want this.

Dont waste your money and just ignore it.

The Best Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

The best certifications in computing come from your own actual experience. When I joined the World's Largest Software Corporation to work on the Largest Software Project in the History of Mankind, I asked them if I should get some certifications. They laughed and laughed, said it was just a marketing program, and not to waste a minute of my time on them. Being an actual software development engineer there was all the certification I was ever going to need, because for every 1000 resumes they received, they hired one person.

They were right. These are marketing programs. They are a waste of time, and you don't want to spend your career working for anyone who puts any faith in them.

Learn, they said. Nobody can take that away.

[Anonymous Coward]

www.rent-your-life.com, because owning your education is stealing.

Freudian slip

[RDW]

On the other, Oracle charges for certification and will definitely profit from this shift.

I had to re-read that sentence - the first time I didn't notice the 'f' in 'shift' and thought the summary was unusually direct.

Re:Freudian slip

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I read it correctly until I saw your comment :)

I doubt it's for the money

[sirwired]

Yes, certifications are not free, but compared to Oracle's total revenues, they are a drop in the proverbial bucket. It would not surprise me if they did anything better than break-even on the program... I just checked, and an Oracle exam voucher is all of $245, even for a proctored exam, and business partners get discounts. And a bunch of that money goes to Pearson to run the tests. On top of that, while I'm not an Oracle guy, other vendors I work with hands out free vouchers like Halloween candy if you do a decent amount of business.

Re:I doubt it's for the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Certifications are a sales tool, but they need to charge *something* so they seem worthwhile.

Re:I doubt it's for the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm....Free candy. Where do I sign up?

Yup

[DaMattster]

That's exactly what it is about: profit. Oracle sucks!

Anyone else read the last line

[Anonymous Coward]

and see it as definitely profit from this "shit " ?

I'm an Oracle DBA

[dheltzel]

. . . with 17 years of experience with Oracle, and I refuse to ever get certified. It's how I weed out the stupid companies. If a job description even mentions that they prefer an OCP, I skip it. Very few senior roles mention it at all and it has never come up in an interview.

I suppose that for someone starting out with almost no Oracle experience it might be worth doing, but it's like your high school GPA, mentioning it a few years out makes you seem desperate and needy.

The only OCP's I know work for Oracle, I think they make you get it if you work for them. I know they don't require it to get a job at Oracle. It really is a worthless cert if you know what you are doing. Experience and good references/referrals will trump a piece of paper every single time, except for companies a true hacker would not want to work for anyway.

Re:I'm an Oracle DBA

[Anonymous Coward]

You just described every cert in existence. Certs are for managers who can't tell the difference between good and bad tech people. It doesn't actually help that situation, but it makes the managers feel better.

Re:I'm an Oracle DBA

[dheltzel]

It cuts both ways -- good tech people can use the demand for certs to tell the difference between good and bad managers. Well, not all bad managers will ask for a cert, but no good one will, so it helps.

IF it is true what you say

[Anonymous Coward]

...then you are just one of these a$$holes who drive companies like HP into the ground. Google, Apple and facebook will then take up the carcass (read: great engineers) and leave you with the bones to gnaw on.
Rot in MBA hell.

I doubt it's for the money

[Anonymous Coward]

And we are supposed to believe this ? Sure as hell this program finances Mr Larry's rescue boats on his yachts. NOTHING Mr Larry touches is unprofitable for a long time.

as someone among 1st to get OCP on 7.3 back in 98

[Anonymous Coward]

let me be among the 1st to ask: people still use oracle?

don't get me wrong - getting that cert paid for itself 100x over as it got me into the big league of .com in 00 but we (company I worked for then) jettisoned oracle for mysql by 04 & had gone mongo/hadoop by time I'd left a couple yrs ago...

to be honest, it hadn't even donned on me I was an OCP in years...

Oracle bad habbits

[jimmifett]

Bah, I'm still dealing with Oracle devs that don't use ansi join syntax, use NVL instead of coalesce, love using Not IN clauses, and can't make a human readable tab indented query to save their lives. I'd swear they let tools build queries for them. Not sure, as I refuse to use Oracle's craptastic tools unless there is no other quick way. I can't even get these people to use the oracle psuedo-standard of 'y'/'n' for a boolean flag (or even 1/0), because oracle still doesn't have a boolean data type. So damn frustrating. I hate oracle. Don't even get me started on oracle dates.

Re:Oracle bad habbits

[Cpt_Kirks]

Gaaaaaah!

I HATE Oracle date "logic".

Certifications...

[Narot23]

Every place I've been around doesn't care if they're super current. Now that all the vendors are doing expiring certs, expired certs are still certs in the eyes of most hiring managers. "Oh yeah you know Jimmy is Cisco certified but I think it expired last year or something. We'll get him into update it eventually" is the general tone you hear from the managers. If the cert even matters, if you passed a test 2 years ago and it's $5,000 to stay "current" I don't think many managers care, if they care about certs at all. That's just one of those "oh, you have them, OK" items on a resume, like a bachelor's.

Growing Trend

[grilled-cheese]

Cisco has pulled stuff like this for a while, but VMware this year did the same shenanigans. I'm seeing this being a growing trend for larger company certifications.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Certifications...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that this may be fine with "normal" companies. But in the public sector they often do calls for bid for larger projects and one of the required parameters may be a certification.

I have some 20+ years of Oracle experience and an old OCP 8 DBA. Nowadays that would suit fine since the "requirement" is fullfilled. In the future I would have to undergo that procedure and the costs every now and then just to fulfill a requirement that nobody really cares for, but is needed within the application process. And nobody can tell me that it would change the quality of my work a single jota !

Compared with the software costs...

[sirwired]

Compared with the licensing costs for Oracle DB software, $245 (which quite a lot of people never pay) is a freakin' rounding error.

I don't see any problem at all here... it's perfectly normal for certifications to expire with any number of vendors or industry-wide certs.

hum

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you go through computer, networking, and programming books(c++ in 24 hours) it wont make you an expert in these fields. You get your skills and also increase them from hands on experience. You can read all the books and get all the certifications you want and still won't be as skilled as the other guy with 20+ years experience in these fields.

Re:hum

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, another option might be getting a college or uni degree in computer science. That might give you a leg on those self-trained chemical engineers who sniff the money in "computers". And dont bother to learn what quicksort and hashtables are.

BUT, BUT - dont expect high wages from that. Actually, most CS types are vastly underpaid for all the effort which goes into learning the quirks of compilers, OSs, frameworks and the like. Plus being tortured by some theoretical CS profs. Stay away and become a medical doctor - that rakes in much more for less effort.

I have a CS degree and I work for a major company which invented something (almost) everybody uses every single day.

Key question

[jgarry]

All you need to do is take a couple of upgrade exams, and pink unicorns will bombard you from the sky with suitcases of sparkly cash.

See the alternate method at the bottom of this doc.

Re:So Oracle certifications just lost the 'D' in A

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that Oracle doesn't have the "D"?

"Yes, it's true. This man has no dick." -- Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters (1984)

"Oracle charges for certification and will

[MondoGordo]

definitely profit from this shaft ."

Re:as someone among 1st to get OCP on 7.3 back in

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow ... you're an Omni Consumer Product? Are you RoboCop ?