Preparing for the
Developer Certification Tests
Overview
There is an ongoing problem
for developers and for employers; developers want to be able to convince
prospective employers of their skills and prospective employers want to be able to
hire qualified developers. Other
professions have solved this problem through a certification process. A good example of this is the US medical profession that
certifies doctors through restrictive medical schools, supervised residencies and
lengthy exams. Other professions
such as accounts, actuaries have similar programs.
The certification process
helps both the developer and the prospective employer. Without some way of knowing the skills
of a developer, it is very hard to hire a good developer. Employers have to lower the starting
salaries in order to build in the risk that the person they are hiring is
incompetent.
Oracle has provided a set of
certification tests that attempt to validate that an individual is a qualified
developer.
To a limited extent the
tests are successful. The set of exams test basic knowledge of the tools
necessary to be a good developer.
However, certification does not guarantee that an individual is a
competent developer. The tests were designed to
show that the individual has taken and mastered the requisite Oracle University classes,
not that they are experienced forms developers.
This paperresentation
discussesshows the place of the Oracle Developer
Certification in the career path of an Oracle Developer.
It introduces the sources of documentation for preparing the tests: available books, trainings, links, and the necessary work experience.
A description of the general conditions for the tests will be provided: prices, discounts, what to do before a test, what the test is like, types, difficulty and number of questions, general advices, tips & tricks.
The various Developer certification tracks will be presented with short descriptions of each test and comments on the areas that should be learned in order to pass that test.
Finally the paper
What comes next:will discuss what you should
do after certification. Specifically, you should gain working experience,
read advanced books, move from the certification forums to the
ODTUG mailing lists and share your experience with ODTUG members at the next
ODTUG conference.
What is the Oracle Certified Professional Program?
The Oracle Certified Professional Program is designedis
supposed to ensure potential employers and customers that a
certified technical resource is able to successfully execute a job role, like
DBA or Application Developer.
You can become a certified professional by passing a number of 4
or 5 computer-based tests, depending on the track you are choosing. The
knowledge that is tested is mainly the kind of knowledge that can be learned in a
training course or by reading a booka theoretical
one. The options and features of the products are testedcovered more in
detail; than however, best practices on using the product are not well
tested. So, in general an OCP developer will
know the products
but not necessarily have any good practical experience.
What the certification tests provide, maybe better than experience does, is coverage of more areas of the product. Maybe certification on its own doesn’t say that a person is ready for a job role, but correlated with an appropriate work experience and the right attitude that person might be appropriate.
From the developer’s perspective, I believefound that it is usefult a useful
moment to pursue certification after about 6 months of effectively using the
product with a production
developer. By then a developer should be able to do things like making a
master-detail form, effectively using a template and object libraries, being
familiar with some built-ins and comfortable with SQL, being able to build a
function or procedure and to build a simple report.
I think that before mastering all the tricks of the products, and starting to build really fancy triggers or quite complex reports, the developer should understand all the properties and features of the products he/she is using, in order to avoid rebuilding what is already built.
In this domain there are people who are using these products for 7
or even more years. It looks impossible for a beginner to quickly get to the
level of knowledge that this much experience can get you. This is why an
accelerated method of learning is needed. I found that preparingLEARNING for certification (not
necessarily the certification itself) got me closer to my
goalwas a
valuable experience.
Depending on your experience, I think that preparing for eacha test might take 2 weeks to one month.
This means weekends, lunch breaks, after work study, and working with the
products. If you schedule the tests in advance (just to keep you focused on your
goal), you can end up knowing the products pretty well and having a Diploma in
about 3 to 5 months.
I Cthink that the best place
where the certification is useful is
acan be an
asset during a job interview. TAnd this is
true even if the interviewer thinks that certification is useless. You can alwaysThis is
the place to discussshow why did
you choose to become certifiedy and how did
you accomplisheddo it. It might
tell more about your attitude than about your technical skills. But you can
count on some questions about certification, and… you can prepare for it. I
think the key is to not show an attitude of “I am certified, therefore I know
everything.”, first
of all because you actually don’t know everything just because you are
certified”.
What does the “list” think about the OCP Program?
There was an active thread
on the ODTUG lists concerning the OCP program recently. People, in general, expressed a lack of confidence in
being able to use certification as a reliable indicator of ability. Others
looked like they were very eager to get more sources of information for the
tests. The fact that all these people are monitoring the list is a sign that
they are serious about their professional improvement.
Here are a few extracts from postings on the thread.
“I, like most, agree that the OCP on its own does not indicate an expert Oracle Developer. The OCP exams test book knowledge of a variety of Oracle Development tools such as SQL, Program Units, Forms and Reports. The OCP is intended as a credential to add to a person's experience. This can be required for a company to be an Oracle Partner; it can be beneficial to an individual to make him stand out in consulting, contracting work or job searches or possibly in receiving promotions.
I took the exams, but not the Oracle courses. I found the exercise of studying for the exams to be very beneficial as I touched on some areas that I may have neglected before and thus improved my abilities as a developer. For people in similar situations as me, I would highly recommend doing the same.”
“The OCP exams test a persons knowledge of textbook issues and tool rules. They test very little of real world scenarios. I have interviewed people who have taken various certification exams (both Oracle and non Oracle) and have found that some of these candidates while having very impressive certification credentials have very little real world experience and become a liability when a project begins.
I think that certification exams have their place and merit when looking at potentially hiring a candidate, however this must be in conjunction with some real world experience (except of course when hiring a pure entry level candidate).
I have taken, and passed, Oracle certification exams and did so based upon my 15 years in the industry.”
“I'm doing real system development too for the last seven years but I'm kind of proud that I have an OCP Developer certification. The funniest thing for me is that I've never taken any Oracle courses...
The truth is that if you are even a very good developer you can easily fail at OCP Dev exams and if you have no practical experience, but you spent too much time and money with Oracle Education, you could get this OCP certification.”
“As the OCP exam presently stands, I think it is useful for
experienced developers to become certified as it makes sure that you have really
looked at all parts of the product.
It will help you make sure you don't have any obvious holes in your
product knowledge. For prospective
employers, who are trying to find competent developer talent, do not rely too
heavily on certification as being a good measure of developer quality.”
“I'm curious why Oracle recently cut off the Reports exam from OCP Developer track. Wasn't that because it was too difficult for candidates to pass it? :-)”
I have cleared OCP Paper 2 (PL/SQL Program Units). While studying, I have prepared a txt file (summary), which I believe could help those who may be pursuing certification. I have uploaded it at http://www.exploreora.freeservers.com/ ”
Preparing for Oracle Certification
The cCertification
program is offered
throughpart of Oracle University (formerly Oracle Education).
This is why tests are
slanted towards the information presented in Oracle training classesgo hand in
hand with Oracle trainings. The easiestbest way for a beginner to preparelearn for the certification is to take
the corresponding Oracle Instructor-Led or Computer-Based Training. The test
questions are based on these manuals.
You can find out what courses are necessary for you by using the link http://www.oracle.com/start/ocp/. Registration is free and by entering a few data, you can have access to the OCP On-Line Starter Kit. From this page you have links to the Candidate Guides, to the on-line test registration site, and to the STS site where you can purchase practice tests.
STS is the company that builds the actual tests, so their sets of questions are most like the real test questions.
If you only want to test your knowledge and get an idea of what
the tests are like you can download sets of sample questions for free. It is
strongly recommended to try these sample tests before actually registering for
an exam no matter how experienced you are. This is because you should understand
the terminology and the kind of questions that are on the actual test. However,
you should be aware
that these example questions are the simpler than thest questions that you willcan find in the actual test. The sample
tests comprise about 20 questions, the real test - 60 questions., You should not expect to be able to pass the exam if
so don’t go to the exam if you can’t
respond correctly to almost 100% of the sample sets of
questions.
Additional good sources for preparing for the tests:
·
Books: There are several certification books available. I recommend: “Oracle Certified
Professional Application Developer Exam Guide” by -:Jason Couchman &
Christopher Allen,
Oracle Press.
·
On-line help – You can use the sample tests to show
you where you need
helpthe weaker areas, and then search the
online help for more information
· Hands-on using the product. Even though I heard of people that could take the tests without actually seeing the product, I think an absolute minimum requirement is to browse through all menus, properties of objects, know how to handle objects in the Object Navigator, learn to use the wizards
·
Web sites: the only one I found that is
specifically for the Developer certification is http://www.oradev.freewire.co.uk/.
The site http://www.oranotes.com/
is mainly based on DBA certification, ban can be useful, especially for the
first exam: Introduction to Oracle: SQL and PL/SQL that is common for the 2
tracks.
Developer Certification Tracks
There are mainly three tracks for the Developer job role. These are:
·
Application Developer, Oracle
Developer Rel. 2
This track comprises 5 exams: SQL and PL/SQL, PL/SQL
Program Units, 2 Forms 5 based tests and a Reports 3 based test. The person that
passes all the exams of this track receives 2 certificates: one for Release 2
certification, the other one as Internet Application Developer.
If you
already have a Release 1 certification, you can upgrade to this new
certification by passing a single upgrade exam.
Each test costs $125.
·
Internet Application Developer, Oracle Forms
Developer Rel. 6/6i
This track comprises 4 exams: SQL and PL/SQL, PL/SQL
Program Units and 2 Forms 6/6i based tests. There is no Reports test in this
track.
If you already have a Release 1 certification, you can upgrade to
this new certification by passing a single upgrade exam.
Each test costs
$125.
·
Oracle Java Developer
This track comprises 5
tests grouped under 3 skill-levels: Sun Certified Programmer (1 test), Certified
Solution Developer (2 tests: Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with UML and a
JDeveloper test) and Certified Enterprise Developer (2 tests: Enterprise
Connectivity with Java Technology, Enterprise Development on the Oracle
Platform).
This is a new track and is part of the JCert initiative – an
attempt of creating a common certification for Java developers; The 3 companies
that are part of this initiative are Oracle, Sun and IBM.
The Financial Application Consultant and Application Developer - Release 1 will be retired the summer of 2001.
By participating into different
groups you can receiveget the
following discounts fromto the
listed price of the certification testss:
· ODTUG – 16%
· OTN – 20% (the registration to OTN is free, just fill in some info at http://technet.oracle.com/ )
· Oracle Partner Program – 35%
·
At conferences, sometimes you mightcan take get
substantial discounts for the tests at a substantial discount right at the
conference, so be prepared.
Each test is comprised of 57 or 60 questions. The tests need to be
completed in 90 minutes (or 120 minutes
if you are not a native
English speaker)for non-English
speaking. The passing score is 38 or 39 questions, depending on the
test.
Most of the questions have one correct answer out of four. If
there is more than one correct answer the number is specified and you are not
allowed to continue if you check more than the required number of answers. So there
is little chance of being wrong here. Also before ending the test
there is a list of questions, and the incomplete questions are
marked.
When you reach the end of
the exam, you will see a listing of your answers to the questions. Questions that you have not answered or
incompletely answered (some questions ask you to select more than one answer)
are marked.
The current tests have about 1 to 5 questions that are supported by external applications. These can be either matching definitions with words, ordering items or selecting a button, menu command or property. Write down the answers to these questions, as you will not be able to just review them. If you want to review them, you need to answer them again as your previous selections will be lost. These questions are usually easier than the other ones, so no need to be worried about them, just pay attention to them.
You can mark questions and return to them before the exam is finished. Also you can review all the answers (except the ones that are supported by external applications) before concluding the exam.
General tips:
· First read all the questions carefully. Answer the ones that you find easy and are sure about. Click on the answer that looks like the best to you and mark the ones that look more difficult. Make notes on your judgments, so you can use your notes when reviewing the answers. Guess and select something even if you are not sure, because there is no penalty for wrong answers.
· Mark unsure items – there are lots of questions and you can get bored or out of time. After passing through all answers you can review the marked ones.
· Write down External Application items.
· Pay attention to wording. You may encounter questions that look like “Select the statement that is not a non-equijoin…” or “Select the statement that is not correct…”
· Before you can take the test you will have to browse through about 5 pages of the Candidate Agreement. You might want to do this at home. This isn’t part of the testing time, but it’s disturbing to read a legal agreement when you were expecting to see test questions.
Tests Descriptions
The Candidate’s Guide is the best place where you can find out
more about each of the following exams. These Candidate Guides also comprise a
checklist of issues that have to be studied in order to pass the exam. As some
of these checklist items are sometimes obscure, you might want to
check the sample tests, or a book to find out what exactly does Oracle mean by
that phrase.
Tests - 1Z0 – 001 – Introduction to Oracle: SQL and PL/SQL
This test is common for the DBA, the Application Developer and the Internet Application Developer certification. You can take this test once for all of these certifications.
This test is very much based on logic. If you are loaded with lots
of SQL, PL/SQL knowledge, and patience to carefully read the questions and all
the answers, you can
easily pass’t miss this testone.
Be sure
that you know aboutDon’t skip:
· Date Functions and manipulation
· AND and OR statement with NULL values
· All parts of SELECTS are tested, including GROUP BY, HAVING clauses and (non-correlated) subqueries, but not the CONNECT BY clause.
· Differences between SQL, SQL*Plus and PL/SQL commands;
· Part of PL/SQL program units.
· Database objects: Dictionary views, creating, altering tables, views, constraints.
1Z0 – 101 – Develop PL/SQL Program Units
This test is common for the Application Developer 2 certification.
Be sure
that you know about:Don’t skip:
· Invoking procedures and functions, defining triggers
· Differences between procedures and functions and database triggers
· Privileges required to execute program units
· Dependencies and how does the recompiling occur
1Z0 – 120 – Release 1 to Release 2 Upgrade Test: Developer/2000 Release 2 New Features
This test is needed if you have a Release 1 certification and you want to upgrade to Release 2.
1Z0 – 121 – Developer/2000 Build Forms I
This test is common for both Application Developer tracks and it can be replaced by the Build Internet Applications I test. Even the checklist in the Candidate Guide is similar.
· Insist on one-many relationships between windows - canvases, and block - frames
· Don’t forget to check text, and non-input items properties
· When double-click on T-lists or images, the trigger that is fired is When-…-Activated.
1Z0 – 122 – Developer/2000 Build Forms II
This test is specific for the Application Developer track.
You can learn for this one from the on-line help. It mostly covers Built-ins and SYSTEM variables.
1Z0 – 123 – Developer/2000 Build Reports
This test is specific for the Application Developer track.
Learn about Frames and the symbols for flexibility, repeatability; don’t miss matrix reports.
1Z0 – 130 – Release 1 to Release 6/6i Upgrade Test: Oracle Forms Developer Release 1 to Release 6/6i New Features
This test is needed if you have a Release 1 certification and you want to upgrade to Release 6/6i.
1Z0 – 131 – Build Internet Application I
This test is almost identical with the Developer/2000 Build Forms I test.
1Z0 – 132 – Build Internet Application II
This test is similar with the Application Developer track’s Build Forms I, but cannot be substituted by that test.
1Z0 – 501 – Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform
This test covers the first level skill of the Java Developer track. Price: $150
1Z0 – 513 – Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with UML
This test is needed for the second level skill of the Java Developer track. Price: $175
1Z0 – 502 – Oracle
JDeveloper: Develop Database Applications with Java (JDeveloper Rel.
2)
This test is optional for the second level skill of the Java Developer track. Price: $125
1Z0 – 512 – Oracle
JDeveloper: Develop Database Applications with Java (JDeveloper Rel.
3)
This test is optional for the second level skill of the Java Developer track. Price: $125
1Z0 – 504 – Enterprise
Connectivity with Java Technology
This test is needed for the third level skill of the Java Developer track. Price: $125
1Z0 – 505 – Enterprise
Development on the Oracle Internet Platform
This test is needed for the third level skill of the Java Developer track. Price: $125
Steps to Follow in Order to Become Certified
1. Work for about 6 months with the products; learn SQL, PL/SQL, Forms, and Reports.
2. Take the sample test. If your answers are very close to 100%, then you are ready for the test.
3. Learn in order to fill in the gaps: Use on-line Help, STS tests, Couchman’s book, etc..
4.
Schedule your
test - the online facility is most
convenient in USA. A telephone scheduling is possible, but I heard the the
line is always busy.
5. Take the test.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 for each test
7. After 30 days you will receive the OCP certificate. If you choose to follow a mixed path (like take exam Build Internet Applications I instead of the Build Forms I), you may need to email fullfilment@prometric.com and send them your data.
After Certification
Being certified doesn’t make you a s Senior dDeveloper or an eExpert. It takes years to learn enough
tips to be able to build a production system. You can read more advanced books (
I found Peter Koletzke &Paul Dorsey’s book Advanced Developer Forms and
Reports as extremely useful at this level), participating at Oracle User Groups,
Forums, E-mail lists, User conferences. Another good source is finding and
working with an expert that can mentor you.
The rhythm in which new releases of software are produced is not letting a developer rest for 6 months or more… You need to always be alert and there is always something to learn out there.
Another way you can continue your career might be changing your job role. You might want to broaden your knowledge and become a Java developer or a DBA. The best DBA’s are the ones that were previously developers. This way they know exactly what the developers expect from them and can speak the same language.
About the Author
Ileana Balcu is an Oracle Certified Application Developer since
1999. She worked at developing an integrated banking solution for the largest
bank of Romania. She authored two wWeb bBased tTraining courses for Oracle
certification. She is currently a
Senior Developer for Dulcian, Inc.