Episode 4: ORACLE8 Network Administration

In order to fairly gauge the meaning of "OCP certified" on DBA resumes, and as part of the background for my Advisory Board work on behalf of the Database Domain, I am going back through the DBA certification process. For the fourth test, I chose Oracle8 Network Administration. By now, I think I've seen enough of these tests to develop a strategy for actually learning something from them. Hopefully this information is helpful to those readers considering certification.

By their nature, the tests are difficult to learn from. Consider the following scenario: you take this test, and you don't know the answers to half the questions because you never use the networking options those questions cover. For those questions, you guess. Your score ends up being 1 point lower than the passing grade. Most people, given the chance to re-take the exact same test right after almost passing, will make the exact same guesses, with as few changes as possible - they don't want to risk losing the ones they accidentally guessed right. How can you better prepare for the test when you re-take it?

You could start by reviewing material on the questions you missed, but the questions will be different the next time you take the test (the test question set is randomized). Will your re-test grade be a product of knowing the material better or guessing better on the questions related to products you never use? Also, which questions will be asked?

When you take an OCP test, you receive a grade report. The "section analysis" part of this report shows your raw score in each of the test's sections. Now what? Well, review the number of questions from each section in the test to see which account for most of the test. In some tests, those questions may be all bunched together, so you can identify the section as you're taking the test. When you re-take the test, watch for the section divisions. If you don't know all of the networking products well, for instance, you could skip entire sections (rather than just skipping individual questions) during your first pass through the test questions. That is, you can take the test in sections rather than in the order provided by default. Focus on the sections you know first. Otherwise, you'll spend a lot of discouraging time wading through questions you're going to end up guessing on anyway.

I haven't seen the passing scores for the tests advertised, and I assume they are subject to change. So far, three of the tests have had the same passing score and one was higher. This test was the most aggravating to take due to typos in the questions and lack of clear assumptions behind the questions. But as noted in the last certification writeup, it doesn't pay to argue with the computer about the questions and answers.

At OpenWorld, I had a conversation with a person from the Linux Professional Institute. According to her, the highest-level Cisco certification test is the following: in the morning, they give you all the network components in a room and you have to put a network together and get everything running. Then you go to lunch. During your lunch break, they break your network. When you come back, you have to diagnose and resolve the problems they introduced. Imagine that on a database backup/recovery certification test - people would practice by breaking and recovering databases repeatedly. Sounds like a great practice to encourage (the recovery part, that is) - and encouraging that sort of practice sounds like a great goal for OCP to shoot for. Questions should be based on having used the technology.

To improve your chances of learning something from the OCP tests, the test creators could put the category on each test question as it is asked. That way, you'll have the chance to realize that all of your marked questions come from specific categories (even if they're scattered throughout the test) and you'll also have better context for each question. As it currently stands, you won't see the categories until after the test has been completed unless you go to the of site an education service (like the Database Domain) or Oracle to read about the categories. Any mental work you can do during the test to categorize the questions will help you to match your "guess" answers to the category scoring report, and ultimately will help guide your later training and testing.

Four for four. On to backup/recovery…