Customer Reviews

Oracle8 Certified Professional DBA Practice Exams

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Very well put together. It looks alot like the Oracle8 Certified Professional DBA Exam Guide and works well as a supplement to it. The book is divided into 2 sections, an Exam section and a Terms and Concepts section. Each exam section has 2 tests (i.e. the database administration has Test1 of 60 questions and Test2 of 60 questions). The questions are similar to those in the DBA Exam guide, and others, but different in content. I've gone over the questions in the DBA Exam Guide to where in alot of cases I've memorized the answers. This gives you a new set of questions to work with to identify weaknesses after you've gone over the DBA Exam guide. After taking some of the tests, the Oracle Press books seem to be the way to go. This one's no different.

I bought this book for one reason -- to practice taking OCP exams. As for this, I can not say this book suceeded. First, the practice exam questions are much different than the real exam questions. The author of this book seems more hung up on tricking you with distracters than simulating the level of dificulty of the real exam questions. For example, all of this book's questions are muliple choice. On my OCP exams, there were a few fill in the blank, and sometimes one matching. Selecting a V$ view or init.ora parameter name from a list is totally different than typing it in from scratch.

Second, several questions in the book have the incorrect answers! I have found on every exam in this book at least two incorrect answers. The worst part is the author's explaination of the answer proves that it is wrong!

Third, the CDROM's electronic test's are filled with errors. Same problem with incorrect answers(and explainations), but the software won't let you select mulitple answers even when the question tells you to!

The only real worthy parts to the book are the Introduction (very well done) and the Exam Terms and Concepts section (however, this section is only a rapid review of complex topics -- good for a warm-up prior to taking the actual exam).

If you are looking for very good practice exams, you will not go wrong with Self-Test Software's practice tests. They are very pricy, but very accurate!

The interactive Exam-Based question on CD-ROM was very useful. This book cover all five OCP DBA exams, which make exam taker's jobs easier then ever... Best of all, the author also included Oracle 8i upgrade exam with this amazing edition. Check it out, you won't regret buying this book.