How can I became the Oracle9i Certified professional?
Oracle9i, the DBA Certification track is now divided into 2 primary tiers, as well as a third Master-level tier: br>
• Oracle9i Certified Associate (OCA)
• Oracle9i Certified Professional (OCP)
• Oracle9i Certified Master (OCM)
The Oracle9i Certified Associate (OCA) was designed to provide for the beginner DBA certification designation for the Oracle9i platform. Information Technology professionals with little or no Oracle experience can obtain the knowledge and skills necessary to break into the highly lucrative and challenging Oracle profession. The skills obtained from completing this certification track will allow the candidate to participate on Oracle-related projects acting as junior-level DBAs. Typically, a senior-level DBA will work closely to assign appropriate DBA tasks to strengthen existing skills, and challenge them to learn slightly more advanced procedures.
The Oracle9i Certified Professional (OCP) tier was designed for mid to senior-level DBAs with one or more years of focused Oracle DBA experience. The knowledge and skills obtained from completing Oracle9i Certified Professional (OCP) prepare the DBA to provide the full assortment of DBA-related tasks...from Database Design and Development to production tasks such as Performance Tuning and Backup & Recovery.
How can I became the Oracle9i Certified Master (OCM)?
The OCM designation first requires that you obtain your Oracle9i OCP credential. Once this is secured, Oracle requires that you take two advanced Oracle courses from Oracle University. These are Instructor-led courses that will cost on average $2,000 each. There are about a dozen different courses to choose from:
• Oracle9i: Program with PL/SQL
• Oracle9i: Advanced PL/SQL
• Oracle9i: SQL Tuning Workshop
• Oracle9i: Database: Real Application Clusters
• Oracle9i: Database: Data Guard Administration
• Oracle9i: Database: Implement Partitioning
• Oracle9i: Data Warehouse Administration
• Oracle Net Services: Advanced Administration
• Oracle9i: Advanced Replication
• Oracle9i: Enterprise Manager
Once you've completed the course requirements, you can then register for and take the "practicum" exam. The practicum is a two-day, hands-on performance exam that requires the candidate to perform a number of tasks using Oracle9i on the Linux platform. Some of the skills that need to be proven include: database configuration, replication, partitioning, parallel operations, diagnostics, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and backup and recovery...all with "real-world" scenarios
Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is defined as a planned and
systematic approach to the evaluation of the quality of and
adherence to software product standards, processes, and
procedures. SQA includes the process of assuring that
standards and procedures are established and are followed
throughout the software acquisition life cycle. Compliance
with agreed-upon standards and procedures is evaluated
through process monitoring, product evaluation, and audits.
Software development and control processes should include
quality assurance approval points, where an SQA evaluation
of the product may be done in relation to the applicable
standards.
Product evaluation and process monitoring are the SQA
activities that assure the software development and control
processes described in the project's Management Plan are
correctly carried out and that the project's procedures and
standards are followed. Products are monitored for
conformance to standards and processes are monitored for
conformance to procedures. Audits are a key technique used
to perform product evaluation and process monitoring.
Review of the Management Plan should ensure that appropriate
SQA approval points are built into these processes.
Product evaluation is an SQA activity that assures standards
are being followed. Ideally, the first products monitored
by SQA should be the project's standards and procedures. SQA
assures that clear and achievable standards exist and then
evaluates compliance of the software product to the
established standards. Product evaluation assures that the
software product reflects the requirements of the applicable
standard(s) as identified in the Management Plan.
Process monitoring is an SQA activity that ensures that
appropriate steps to carry out the process are being
followed. SQA monitors processes by comparing the actual
steps carried out with those in the documented procedures.
The Assurance section of the Management Plan specifies the
methods to be used by the SQA process monitoring activity.
A fundamental SQA technique is the audit, which looks at a
process and/or a product in depth, comparing them to
established procedures and standards. Audits are used to
review management, technical, and assurance processes to
provide an indication of the quality and status of the
software product.
The purpose of an SQA audit is to assure that proper control
procedures are being followed, that required documentation
is maintained, and that the developer's status reports
accurately reflect the status of the activity. The SQA
product is an audit report to management consisting of
findings and recommendations to bring the development into
conformance with standards and/or procedures.
Testing involves operation of a system or application under controlled conditions and evaluating the results
(eg, 'if the user is in interface A of the application while using hardware B, and does C, then D should happen').
The controlled conditions should include both normal and abnormal conditions. Testing should intentionally attempt
to make things go wrong to determine if things happen when they shouldn't or things don't happen when they should.
It is oriented to 'detection'.
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