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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."

11 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Key question by abhisri · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Key question by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:Key question by Virtucon · · Score: 3, Funny

      So that means you're not certified then?

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    3. Re:Key question by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
  2. Give me $5.000 by Ivan+Stepaniuk · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --
    My other signature is a car
    1. Re:Give me $5.000 by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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"

  3. 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.

    2. Re:Not a great loss... by StormReaver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  4. So Oracle certifications just lost the 'D' in ACID by tlambert · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  5. Freudian slip by RDW · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.