Customer Reviews

OCA/OCP: Oracle9i DBA Fundamentals I Study Guide

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read the book and passed the test on my first attempt. I did not find any errors like those found in the Oracle Press 9i exam prep books. All the topics were covered. The CD-ROM exams and flash cards were a big help. Overall, excellent test preparation.

The figures and quizzes are definitely the best part of this book. It's very well written and easy to follow, however, just as with any certification, I suggest supplimenting it with a training course, or real world experience. I'm currently enrolled in an Oracle9i DBA cert course, and I'm planning on taking this test by the end of May (2002)...at that time I'll be better equipped to write a more applicable review. For now, i give it 4/5 stars, missing the 5th star because it's not the kind of text that will guarantee you an 'A' on the test...but that's probably for the best...Oracle does it right, making sure their certifications are not easily obtained by those w/o real world experience.

EDIT: took the test, got an 80% on the basic section and an 80% on the mastery section, so all in all, i must say, this book did a great job preparing me. i borrowed the equivalent from oracle press, and was dissatisifed.

Compared to the excellent coverage of OCA exam objectives by Sybex's Study Guide for 1Z0-007, this titles does not deliver at all. I used this guide to prepare for the exam along with the Oracle Press title and found that the latter covers the exam material in much more detail. Even the level of practice questions in the Sybex study guide are nowhere even near the level of difficulty the real exam poses. These questions should be revised keeping in view the test format (Basic/Mastery Sections). Even the coverage of materials is superficial and not enough to give the candidate the confidence to take the exam. My suggestion would be to use another book along with this study guide (I strongly recommend the Oracle Press title - the CD has some excellent questions).

I purchased this book and downloaded Oracle 9i from the Oracle web site. I spent less than 40 hours reading the book, doing the practice questions and playing around with Oracle and I passed the exam with a 47/60. It's not the greatest of passing margins but considering I haven't had any prior experience or training with Oracle (I have had one year of experience with MS SQL Server 2000) and it took less than 40 hours of my time to prepare for it, I would say the book did its job well.

My objective in going to the exam was to learn the basics of database and passing the exam was secondary ( i have a fairly well settled job where certification does not matter much).Anyway, No review on certification books is complete without giving a background of your experiences on the subject :

MY DBA EXPERIENCE :
My experiences on Oracle DBA fundamentals is practically and theoretically zero. I have already passed the Introduction to Oracle9i SQL exam which is a pre-requisite to get certified. You can be a master in SQL skills and still be a novice in DBA Fundamentals. Frankly I DID NOT know the following :

1. Physical structure of database is composed of controlfiles, datafiles and log files
2. Never knew that most developers and DBA's spend the time on logical structures which are tables, tablespace etc and do not physically exist in the database
3. Had never heard of V$views
4. I was aware of tables, tablespaces ,DDL commands etc
5. I am an application developer and bulk of my interaction with oracle was select statements,update statements etc
6. Was aware of different types of indexes and that is an important topic in both SQL fundamentals exam and DBA fundamentals exam

If you can answer to all of the above criteria's with a confident 'yes', you are most likely a DBA already and just want to get urself a pay raise by getting certified..Yes, this book will help to breeze thro ( i read about someone who got the exam passed by studying the book for 40 hours).For newbies like me, it is not that easy..in fact it is doubly difficult over intro to sql exams because, i lacked the practical experience ( try inactivaing a tablespace from your company database).

STUDY EFFORT : This book goes through every topic in detail,but sorely misses the visual explanation that would have made some topics easy ( example ...shutting down an instance and startup). This is the reason why i am not giving 5 stars to the book. Neverthless every topic was well described. some of the topics are little elaborate eating into our valuable study time. I studied the book totally 4 times , since after every reading ,tried doing the question paper and slowly removed the errors in understanding.It took a whopping 6 months for me ( and my friend) to learn as you earn.With little more effort, probably i could have got certified in 4 months

I used the book tests and Best of all, my friend who also passed the exams sent me a question paper ( that be purchased in ebay) based on Jason Couchman's book Took that exam( about 150 questions)..and everytime went back to the book reading the chapters and sections where i got it wrong . As a matter of fact, the question paper from jason was very very closely aligned with the questions i got in the exam.

EXAM : Passed the exam .scored 49 correct ( required 44). there was not one question on syntaxes . i assume the oracle examiners have decided it is too easy to find syntaxes on the internet and were focusing on understanding of the subject ( ex : steps taken to multiplex a control file)
If passing the exam is primary for u..don't miss the simulation exams of Jason Couchman ( of course u need to study )..but if u want to learn every aspect of DBA Fundamentals, use this book. On the job, this book is a great resource ( according to a junior DBA in our team). Well written book!

You need to practice more questions than the ones that comes with this book (simpler than actual exam). Don't feel so confident if you getting good results after doing its questions. To be fair, there were questions exactely like in the book but expect more multiple choice in the real exam.

This book contains few mistakes and few questions that are not covered in its content.

To pass those Oracle Exams is hard for a newbie anyways because the hand on experience is missing. I am one of these candidates but I have to say that this book is very helpful to get ready for the test. 95% of the topics needed for the exam are completely in this book and explained in a good understandable way. For the other 5% I have used the original Oracle training documents. After you have passed the exam this book is an awesome reference because topics are divided in a very usefully way and all topics have examples of the SQL commands and dictionary views.

I used this book and ILT Oracle's manual for my preparation.
Most of the objectives are covered in the book, I like the way in which information is being presented, the only problem I found is some chapters miss important information such as names of dictionary views, which are clever to exam.

NLS is barely covered and not all views are shown.
The tables chapter enforced too much about types of segments, I spent too much time looking into creating partioned tables which is not part of exam objectives.

The Undo chapter misses information on how to check for PENDING DELETE rollback segments.

Follow Exam Objectives when using this book, so you won't waste time memorizing stuff you don't need.
Good Luck

I have passed the Oracle 9i fundamentals I 50/60. This book is
really good with explanations. I will highly recommend it for
dba test. Use self test software simulator questions also

This book is well written, there are a few errors here and there but the main points are brought about well. I scored a 57/60 on the test with mostly just using this book, and some oracle online documentation to get a little more information on some of the views, so on. Make sure you know redolog files and how they work, seemed like I had a few questions on the test about those. I didnt really use the flash card software with the book, but I did go over the tests at the ends of the chapter a couple times.