Although Oracle has made the
front page news lately because of their attempted hostile purchase of
PeopleSoft, there is also some practical Oracle news, at least for IT
professionals. Oracle plans to unveil an upgrade to its database at OracleWorld
in San Francisco this September 7th. This version will be called Oracle 10G. (To
find out more about this product, read
this eWEEK
article). As it is unlikely that Oracle will change its database
certification program for some time, getting certified on Oracle 9i still makes
sense, especially if you hold an OCP (Oracle Certified Professional)
certification for an Oracle version prior to 9i. Relational Database Market Share
In overall relational database sales, a huge industry that is around $6.6
billion USD in size, here are the leading vendors and their overall (mainframe,
Unix and Windows) market share:
IBM - 36%
Oracle - 34%
Microsoft - 18%
In the Windows and Unix realm, here are the numbers:
Oracle - 42%
IBM - 24%
Microsoft - 23%
So although Oracle has seen a decline at the expense of IBM in high end
computing environments, and Microsoft in low end computing environments, Oracle
is still a huge player in this key IT industry. From this perspective, keeping
your Oracle certification, or tackling it for the first time, makes sense.
If you have an Oracle 7.3 or 8 DBA (Database Administrator) OCP designation,
you'll be happy to know that Oracle has just released a one exam path
for you to upgrade to an Oracle 9i OCP. Previously, this upgrade would have
taken three exams for Oracle 7.3 OCPs and two exams for Oracle 8 OCPs. The exam
is:
This exam is in beta from August 1 to August 31, 2003. Unfortunately, the
discounted beta seats have been filled. Oracle says that the production version
of this exam will be available in the Fall of 2003.
The entry point to Oracle 9i DBA certifications is the Oracle 9i Database
Administrator Certified Associate (OCA), which entails these two exams:
1Z0-007 - Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL
OR
1Z0-001 - Introduction to Oracle: SQL and PL/SQL
1Z0-031 - Oracle9i Database: Fundamentals I
Note that the 1Z0-007 is an online exam while the second one can be taken at
a Prometric test center. Also, while distinguishing these exams, note that the
online exam costs $90 USD, while all other Oracle exams cost $125 USD.
Unfortunately, for those just getting starting down the Oracle 9i OCP path,
exams will not be the only cost.
Oracle...
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