The Ideal Candidate

Did you ever wonder what the ideal OCAOCP candidate might look like? Looking at the people who have already received their certification isn't likely to tell you much, because we don't live in an ideal world, and very few of those achieving certification would be considered an ideal candidate. If you look at what the "ideal" candidate looks like, it may be intimidating enough for you to change your mind about pursuing certification. But fear not! Be undaunted! Probably only 5% to 10% of the people who have gone where you are going now can claim to be ideal.

The good news is, if you are willing to go through the process and take it seriously, you can do what it takes to obtain both the necessary experience and the knowledge to not only take the exams but pass them as well. Exam Cram 2 books are designed especially to help to make the process as simple as possible.

The ideal certification candidate has the following knowledge and experience.

• Either academic or other professional training in relational databases, SQL, tuning, and backup and recovery, preferably in Oracle 9i. Although a background in previous versions (such as Oracle 8i) is helpful, it is important that you have a good understanding of the version that you are testing on.

• At least three to five years of hands-on professional database administration experience. This experience would include installation and upgrading of core Oracle executables; creation of one to several databases; tuning; troubleshooting database issues and connection problems; creating users, indexes, tables, tablespaces, and other structures; and managing backups and (more importantly) recovery scenarios.

What do real candidates look like? They are people with no experience. They have been users and administrators of relational databases for more than a decade. They are male and female, young and old, gainfully employed in their field, currently unemployed, or hoping that certification will help them to get that important first job or at least their foot in the door. The only thing that the real candidates, either working toward certification or already certified, have in common is that they are going to take, or have taken, the certification tests.