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Oracle Database Certifications Are No Longer Permanent

Posted by Soulskill on from the you're-now-allowed-to-forget-things dept.

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."

2 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Not a great loss... by Jorgensen · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:Not a great loss... by will_die · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.