Born to Thrive

After having finished the certification path to MCPD Enterprise Application Developer 3.5 I had to choose the next exam. I couldn't take .NET 4.0 exams as they were not available yet, so I chose SQL Developer path. I think it is obvious as I can't even recall the application I worked on that didn't have any database layer. Of course sometimes I worked on business layer, but the application did have data layer that was using either Oracle, MS SQL or IBM DB2 database. Being a very good database developer is as much important for a software developer as being a very good software developer. I have seen quite a few solutions where not really bad software developers did very bad job as database developers, which had very bad results on application performance and stability. Those examples encouraged me to stay focused on database development almost on the same level as staying on software development. That's why I used the gap between .NET exams to take one of the database development exams. So far I have taken only one - 70-441 MCTS SQL Server 2005, so my choice was either SQL Server 2008 or Oracle SQL Expert, and I decided to take 1Z0-047 as at the moment I work more with Oracle Database than SQL Server. So as always before starting studying to an exam, I try to find any information on the exam from people who have taken the exam. Unfortunately, there's not much about this exam. Below are two links I found most useful:
Oracle-Database-Expert-Exam-Guide-Reviews
Oracle Forum
The first link gives you some information on the book "OCA Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam Guide: Exam 1Z0-047" and whether the book is sufficient to the exam. Not much information but always some. The forum link contains a lot more information. Here are some most useful suggestions you can find there:
- read the exam topics
- read the Oracle documentations regarding to the topics
- if you don't like the Oracle docs, then get books from amazon, etc.
- practice on daily basis if you don't work as a developer...
- "To be honest I didn't like this exam because I had to read everything 3 times at least, it was really easy to make mistakes..."
- "Anybody who took it will be subject to non disclosure agreements, so would be very limited in their comments. The only thing I can suggest is to look over the topics for the exam and the sample questions and practice. If you know the topics, carefully view the questions then our should be all right. If its your first exam ever then it will seem a little more daunting."
It is not much but gives you some understanding. So my strategy for this exam is to read the following books and ebooks:
- OCA Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam Guide: Exam 1Z0-047
- Oracle Database 11g The Complete Reference
- SQL Language Reference
- Oracle Database Reference
I think both books and ebooks should give me very deep understanding of SQL and Oracle Database 11g. Once I have read them, I will read again information on the exam topics that you can find on the official Oracle web site. That should guarantee that my studying covered all exam topics since one of the reviews of the exam guide book said that the exam covered several topics not mentioned in the book. The exam guide book has 2 complete sample tests so I think before taking the real test they should help me evaluate my skills and show the topics I need to focus. I also believe that the best way to study is by doing the examples, so I will practice each exam topic to make sure I understand it correctly and there's no error in the book. As far as posts on the exam, I will use sample questions presented on the Oracle official exam web site, as I believe they test the knowledge that is more than likely to appear on the exam.