Ask Santa to give you our pricey certs for Christmas, says Oracle Oracle has suggested that IT Professionals might like to suggest to Santa that popping a certification under the tree is a grand way to celebrate the festive season. Big O's certification program manager Brandye Barrington has blogged the idea in a post titled “Have You Considered Oracle Certification For Your Holiday Gift …
If someone gifted me something I'd be grateful they thought of me. They'd be on my nice list because the thought really is the thing that counts. I'd even try to take the exam, see if I could make their monetary expenditure worthwhile.
...but I don't think there's much call for Oracle anything in the world I inhabit. Indeed, I think the relevance of Oracle to the world at large is shrinking. The margins may be going up - squeal, hostages, squeal! - but they are the core of their own little niche. The rest of the world has adapted to exist without them, and - I think - we are happier for it.
Quite right. Oracle are popular for the same reason Cisco are popular - the qualified people are in charge of which product to buy and they buy what they know. Now that alternatives are as good or better for many uses that is beginning to change as the cost can't be justified as easily. Oracle may always be better for very specific workloads but that won't be sufficient to keep them afloat what all the other workloads are moved to alternatives.
The only really worthwhile qualification for the database product is the OCM, for which you need to have an OCP first so total cost is all your money, as the OCP requires you take a qualifying course from oracle first and the OCM requires an additional 2 courses.
Courses are between 1500 and 2500 pounds and the OCM exam was about 1500 last time I looked, so all in around 7,000 to 9,000 pounds provided you pass first time. I'm not sure I will get that under the Christmas tree and frankly there are things I would rather have. The big advantage of the OCM is its recognised as a professional Qualification by some other countries so can help if you want to emigrate and don't have a degree (Or failed to get one (twice)).
Certification is just an attempt at the protectionist guild system (as rightly dissed by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations); it is often a waste of time for busy people and only affordable to the off freelancers or generous employers, because the prices charged take the proverbial, and are no guarantee of better quality staff or better employment prospects. Oracle are one of the worst; for the Oracle database server you only need to be certified because the damned product interfaces are either deliberately or lazily a pig to use; Microsoft seriously shame Oracle for UI's even if its databases are less good. I'd personally opt to instead use PostgreSQL, where feasible, because the product, support tools, are a lot easier to use, and documentation is a lot better.
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