I’m One of the Very First Oracle Certified Expert - Oracle Database SQL Expert

Looking back to 2006, after my long vacation from work, I planned myself to focus on certification. I want to certify my skills and make me more marketable globally. I don’t have anything to look for in my company - Accenture. I want that when I get back to work I can bring a significant qualify of work to my project.

I started to prepare for my very first certification exam which is 1Z0-007 - Introduction to SQL. I’m very happy to passed this exam with 90.4% score. I’m planning to take my next step to earn Oracle Certified Associate by taking PL/SQL exam but a new Oracle certification got my attention. It’s about the Oracle Certified Expert.

As a software designer and developer, Oracle Certified Expert’s Oracle Database SQL Expert looks appealing to me. I only need to take one exam and I’ll earn an Oracle Certification. Other Oracle guys like Lauren Schneider, Jaffar and Jochen Van de Voorde participated in the beta exam.

I have started my preparation around August since the original end date of the beta exam is September 15, 2006. I took a week of vacation for the whole week of September 12, 2006. Unfortunately, last Friday, my project is on Assembly Test period and logged a couple of defects. I need to work on weekends which makes my time to review shorter. I fixed some defects during till Sunday evening.

Monday morning, I have 2 days left to prepare. I crammed to prepare and took my exam last September 12, 2006. A day before the last day of beta exam, Oracle extended the beta exam till October 15, 2007. With the new date I’m hoping that I will get the results on December 24, 2007 which is the end of the 10-week period after the last day of beta exam. But there is no results that were release, till January 14, 2008 when I check my account in the Prometric website.

There is no scores yet. I’m still waiting for the official notification. Not sure if it’s from Oracle or from Prometric. Now I’m one of the very first Oracle Certified Expert - Oracle Database SQL Expert. Did you passed the Oracle Database SQL Expert exam? Come and post your scores here.

Participating in Oracle Certified Database SQL Expert Beta Exam

As mentioned in my previous post, I participated in Oracle Certified Database SQL Expert Beta Exam. In the past weeks, Lauren Schneider, Jaffar and Jochen Van de Voorde have taken this exam.

The exam has 139 questions for 190 minutes. The areas covered both in 1Z1-047 and 1Z0-007 are easy for me because it was fresh to my memories all the things that I reviewed in preparation to the exam 1z0-007 Introduction to SQL which I have taken last August 27, 2007.

The new things that I studied are

• Performing Flashback Operation - This is really cool which allows you to trace back the previous values of the records in the table. Now, Windows is not the only one who got a Recycle bin, Oracle 10g database has it.
• External Tables
• Multitable INSERT(Unconditional, Conditional and Pivot)
• ROLLUP
• CUBE
• GROUPINGS
• WITH Clause
• Hierarchical Query
• Regular Expressions
• Advanced Queries(Correlated, Noncorrelated) - I’d been using this technique for the past years but not I have no idea that there is a term for this type of queries.

I posted a comment for this exam that they should provide a more deeper questions on Regular Expresions and Flashback operation to their exam. The questions for regular expression is too basic. For the Flashback operation, they need to cover other aspects of Flashback operations.

Becoming a Technical Architect

After my long vacation, doing something different from my work as an Oracle Retail specialist, I realized that I have a brand new dream. In the past, I’m eager to accelerate my career level progression. I want to move up to a higher position as soon as possible but due to the undesired and unexpected turns of time, this is not a feasible as before.

I’m goal now is to further improve my technical skills and be certified. I started to review for Oracle Certification. I reviewed for 3 months for my examination in 1Z0-007 Introduction to SQL and passed with 90.4%. Now I’m now preparing for Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam which is scheduled on Sept 13, 2007. This is a beta exam which I need to wait for 10 weeks to know the results. After this I’ll prepare for PL/SQL exam.

Right now I’m thinking to proceed with certification as an Architect by taking examinations for Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA). I’m a member of PinoyJUG(Pinoy Java Users Group) and a couple of members are interested taking this specially Sun is offering free examination for this beta examination.

The following are useful links for this certification.

• SCEA Preparation
• Recommended Books and Tools
• Javaranch SCEA Discussion Forum

Work and Preparing for Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam

Last month I filed a 1 week vacation to prepare for my Oracle Database SQL Expert exam. The original schedule is on August 27 - 31. But since my project has a deadline on completing the change request data conversion modules on August 31, I rescheduled it on Sept 10 - 14. It’s fine with me because the accredited Prometric testing site I called has no schedule at that period. Last week, I called them again and scheduled my exam on Sept 12.

Unfortunately, last Friday, my project is on Assembly Test period and logged a couple of defects. I need to work on weekends which makes my time to review shorter. The project lacks resources to work on the development and fixing tasks. As the project lead, I need to oversee the things to be done. One of my developer, didn’t come to work so I need to help in fixing the defects. I requested my manager for a resource to help use but there is no reply yet. I worked whole day of Saturday till 5am next day. I slept for 7 hours and then went back to work again. My manager replied and informed me the name of the developer who can help. I called this developer and fortunately she is free to help us.

I completed fixing the two defects and have it for retest around 8pm. I sent my status report and then time for me to review. I hope I can focus now in my preparation for Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam.

My Oracle 1Z0-007 Result

I took the exam for 1Z0-007 Introduction to SQL yesterday (August 27). The some questions are very easy to answer as long as you know to concepts of Oracle SQL 9i. Some questions are tricky so I need to mark the questions to revisit after I completed answer all of the questions. All in all, I marked 17 questions out of 52 for review. To think the passing percentage is 71%, that means I need to have at least 37 correct answers. With 17 questions mark for review that means I only answered 35 questions correctly so I need to review the 17 marked questions so that at least I answered 2 questions correctly to passed.

In the end, after revisiting the 17 questions, I passed the exam with 47 correct answers out of 52 questions. That means I got 5 incorrect answers. My percentage is 90.4% for 1Z0-007. Now, my next step is preparation is for 1Z0-147 PL/SQL to achieve the Oracle Certified Associate.

Things to do if your query is slow

This explains on what to do to investigate why your query is slow.

Link