Oracle Changes Certification Requirements

micromoog writes "Oracle announced today that all new candidates for the Oracle Certified Professional certification must now pass an instructor-led course in addition to passing the four exams previously required. They claim demand from the industry for hands-on experience; however, this move will bring Oracle an extra $2000/class for physical classes, or $1500/class for online classes. Previously, someone with knowledge of Oracle could get certified for nothing more than the cost of the four exams ($500 total). There was no warning or grace period. This seems to me like a simple cash grab on a captive audience."

No kidding...

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to me like a simple cash grab on a captive audience.

No kidding. It's always been a cash grab, the only difference is that Oracle has raised the price from $500 to $2000.

Money Making For Oracle

[randomnull123]

This sounds like a jump by oracle to make more money by "Improving" the courses for the certification, i wonder what microsoft would do if they saw this. the idea is a good one, but the prices are a little bit to high

Oracle feels vulnerable.

[Futurepower(R)]

If you remember, it was exactly this behavior that began the sinking of Novell. This kind of extortion is an early indication that the company feels vulnerable. I don't know why they feel vulnerable, but they know, and they are showing it.

Re:Oracle feels vulnerable.

[zulux]

Suposidly DB2 is making inroads on Oracle - A compelling reason is that if someone buys an IBM mainframe, with IBM DB2 and IBM consulting - there is not "pass the blame" possible - It's all IBM's problem to fix.

Several years ago I would have considered Oracle for our middle sized projects - now were a PostregSQL shop for everyting. We dodn't do large projects where Oracle really shines.

Of course YMMV.

Okay, so that's why.

[Futurepower(R)]

Very interesting.

Re:Oracle feels vulnerable.

[JetScootr]

For one, I can understand the need to have a human at least look over a certification candidate once during the process. I'm a living example of this. In the 1980's I joined the Air Force, and took their most difficult avionics course. It was called "Inertial and Radar Navigation Systems". I was on the honor roll the whole time I was at Keesler AFB, Biloxi MI. I graduated at top of my class - 94.6% average. This class was a mix of everything - analog computers, digital, radar, lasers, gyroscopes, spherical and inertial space navigation, FM and AM, etc.
I got into the field and couldn't fix a damn thing. Why? cuz I understood the theory and the math, which were standardized tests, but Couldn't turn that into the knowledge of "If the light blinks wrong and the direction points consistently 15 degrees west of where it should, what's wrong with the 'capacitive tachometer'?"
A human instructor could have spotted my theory-to-practice problems with hardware. I'm all digital and software now, damn good at it, but The USAF's standardized tests miss read me.

You have got to be kidding.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

Take the number of exams times the number of people that get cets. It is a drop in the bucket. I would even guess that the total gross, no net, of this will be less than one oracle install and licence for a 4 processor machine.

Money grab please...I think it is more about making sure it is not a book worm that has the cert and that they have "proven" hands on exp with the program. Sometimes I think Slashdot is nothing more than on big troll fest by the editors....you got me.

Oracle Certification bundle.

[percey]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the oracle certification bundle that they sold for 9i where you can get all four classes for the price of 2, and now there's five? Will they up the classes in that special offer? I think it was good until August. I'm just speculating here, but I'm wondering if they lost money off of that and decided to make things more difficult. It would also seem that they're trying to make up for that whole California shortfall, but that's just a guess.

Find other alternatives

[powerlifter]

I cannot find real reasons to recommend Oracle any more. I work with more and more applications that run better under Postgres or mysql than with Oracle. The only thing propping these guys up are other for-$$$$ apps that only talk to the big O. I for one just reject them utterly.

Lastly, given the unadulterated abuse and torture they've put SQL through, I've given up on them. They are no longer an SQL database.

I kind of welcome this

[rerunn]

Certifications used to be worth something when everyone and their brother wasnt going out and getting them. This will at least let you know that people with an Oracle cert were at least really serious enough about it to fork up the cash. Sad it had to turn to this but nowadays, you have yahoo's off the street wanting a job with their main claim to fame being an MCSE cert which they passed by memorizing the cheat sheets that you can buy off the net.

Flame away.

Re:I kind of welcome this

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sad it had to turn to this but nowadays, you have yahoo's off the street wanting a job with their main claim to fame being an MCSE cert which they passed by memorizing the cheat sheets that you can buy off the net.

But... But... MCSEs are worth more than degrees if you work in software! The slashbots told me so in that other thread a few weeks ago!

Re:I kind of welcome this

[hpavc]

agreed ... most of the people i work with that have them seem to have gotten them out of a cracker jack box ... the msce stuff they should know they totally dont. i dont know what the testing procedure they go through is. nothing like i have experienced.

though this doesnt mean that the oracle stuff is stricter. i have my ocp and it wasnt easy.

This is kinda stupid...

[kasnol]

I was hoping to take an exam two weeks later, and now they announce this~
I really have to check if they did already did impose this requirement in Hong Kong....

Else I probably earn an OCP ASAP~

$2000 is nothing

[peterdaly]

Think about how much companies pay to use Oracle. In most cases, if you already work for a company that uses Oracle, they will put up the $2k + expenses for you to get certified. It will be a drop in the bucket.

I know my employer would put up the cash for me, if it made sense and I wanted it.

-Pete

Re:$2000 is nothing

[CaptainZapp]

Yes, compared to an Oracle license 2'000$ are chickenshit.

For me as an independant contractor however it is most definitely not, especially, since I can get the product to play around (not for production use of course) virtually for free.

I can understand, why one would want to raise the bar for getting certified. The bar however should be within the exams and not via the price.

So if I want to get certified I am forced to sit for three days into a class, that likely bores the living shit out of me plus I can't bill any customers for this time.

Having actually teached system administration and performance & tuning classes for an enterprise database product (which was not Oracle though, but relational databases are conceptually rather comparable) it's a pretty safe bet, that this is a complete waste of time for my specific case.

But then I don't really care: Certification might look good on paper. I have never really had a need to prove my knowledge to a customer with a crappy piece of (overprized) paper.

Welcome...

[return 42]

This seems to me like a simple cash grab on a captive audience.

Yep. Welcome to the company store. Welcome to the company town. This is a non-union shop. Here are your (admittedly golden) shackles.