I've been working with Oracle 10g for a couple of years now, but never got around to upgrading my Oracle 8i OCP certification. I had some down time this month, studied a couple of days, and as they say in Texas, "got 'er done."
I'm now an Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Professional.
My certification upgrade for teaching SQL Server 2005 is now complete. Just in time for the new year, I achieved my Microsoft Certified IT Professional certification with the Database Administrator specialty.
SQL Server 2005 has three specialities: Database Administrator, Database Developer, and Business Intelligence Developer. Although historically my most taught class was a database development class, my new certification doesn't qualify me for the equivalent in the SQL Server 2005 series. This is because Microsoft has realigned its Database Developer track around Visual Studio .NET and the .NET framework. It's not my key focus area, so I'll have to let that pass. Shame.
But I'm very interested in the Business Intelligence certification and have some backround in that area, so we'll see what Microsoft comes up with (the exams are not yet released.)
Here are my Oracle Tips columns published at TechRepublic.com during December, 2006.
Enable Change Tracking in Oracle for Faster Incremental Backups - December 5, 2006.
DBAs can do incremental backups made via Recovery Manager significantly faster by enabling a new Oracle 10g feature called Change Tracking. Bob Watkins explains how to enable the feature.
Consider Oracle 10gR2's Instant Client Light for Application Deployment - December 12, 2006.
In 10g Release 2 (10gR2), a new Oracle Client option can save disk and memory requirements when accessing Oracle from a custom application. Consider whether Instant Client and Instant Client Light can do what you need instead of the full Oracle Client.
How to Order Siblings in Oracle Hierarchy Queries - December 19, 2006.
Developers can use the ORDER SIBLINGS BY feature of Oracle 10g and later to sort the records in a hierarchy created by the START WITH and CONNECT BY clauses in a SELECT statement.
