Tom,
Is there any announcement on, that the Oracle 8i DBA Track exams are retiring, If that has been announced or possibly there are chances of announcement in the next 3/4 months please let me know.

I am planning to take Oracle 8i dba track exams this information would be helpful to me.

Thanks,
Yakgna

Tom, can you do this, can you do that, please can you take the test for me.

Come on guys!!

Hi Tom,

If you need to hire DBA would you take OCP DBA With 1 year experience or 5 Year experience DBA with no OCP.

Thanks

Hi Tom,

In your response you told

"the one who could communicate the best with me, showed a really good attitude and could answer my questions."

I am from india and my communication skill is not that good but i can under stand all technical questions and really good dba knowledge (thanks to your site).

Could you list your choice in ascending order like
1)answer your questions 50%
2)communicate the best with you 40%
2)good attitude 10% etc.......


The reason for this question is many time i know the answer but my comminication skill is bad so i can't tell my boss...

Thanks

So I won't care about my spoken english. I will spend more time on Oracle, instead of spoken english. Thanks.

Q1). SALES_DATA is a nontemporary tablespace. You have set the SALES_DATA tablespace OFFLINE by issuing this command:

ALTER TABLESPACE sales_data OFFLINE NORMAL;

Which three statements are true? (Choose three.)

A. You cannot drop the SALES_DATA tablespace.
B. The SALES_DATA tablespace does not require recovery to come back online.
C. You can read the data from the SALES_DATA tablespace, but you cannot perform any write operation on the data.
D. When the tablespace SALES_DATA goes offline and comes back online, the event will be recorded in the data dictionary.
E. When the tablespace SALES_DATA goes offline and comes back online, the event will be recorded in the control file.
F. When you shut down the database the SALES_DATA tablespace remains offline, and is checked when the database is subsequently mounted and reopened.

Q2). Your database is currently configured with the database character set to WE8ISO8859P1 and national character set to AF16UTF16.
Business requirements dictate the need to expand language requirements beyond the current character set, for Asian and additional Western European languages, in the form of customer names and addresses.

Which solution saves space storing Asian characters and maintains consistent character manipulation performance?

A. Use SQL CHAR data types and change the database character set to UTF8.
B. Use SQL NCHAR data types and change the national character set to UTF8.
C. Use SQL CHAR data types and change the database character set to AF32UTF8.
D. Use SQL NCHAR data types and keep the national character set to AF16UTF16.

Q3). Consider this SQL statement:(choose one)

UPDATE employees SET first_name = 'John'
WHERE emp_id = 1009;
COMMIT;

What happens when a user issues the COMMIT in the above SQL statement?

A. Dirty buffers in the database buffer cache are flushed.
B. The server process places the commit record in the redo log buffer.
C. Log Writer (LGWR) writes the redo log buffer entries to the redo log files and data files.
D. The user process notifies the server process that the transaction is complete.
E. The user process notifies the server process that the resource locks can be released.

Q4). The server parameter file (SPFILE) provides which three advantages when managing initialization parameters? (Choose three.)

A. The Oracle server maintains the server parameter file.
B. The server parameter file is created automatically when the instance is started.
C. Changes can be made in memory and/or in the SPFILE with the ALTER SYSTEM command.
D. The use of SPFILE provides the ability to make changes persistent across shut down and start up.
E. The Oracle server keeps the server parameter file and the text initialization parameter file synchronized.

Q5)Select the memory structure(s) that would be used to store the parse information and actual value of the bind variable id for the following set of commands:
(Choose one.)
VARIABLE id NUMBER;
BEGIN
:id:=1;
END;
/

A. PGA only
B. Row cache and PGA
C. PGA and library cache
D. Shared pool only
E. Library cache and buffer cache

Q6) Which two statements are true about identifying unused indexes? (Choose two.)

A. Performance is improved by eliminating unnecessary overhead during DML operations.
B. V$INDEX_STATS displays statistics that are gathered when using the MONITORING USAGE keyword.
C. Each time the MONITORING USAGE clause is specified, the V$OBJECT_USAGE view is reset for the specified index.
D. Each time the MONITORING USAGE clause is specified, a new monitoring start time is recorded in the alert log.

Q7) Which memory structure contains the information used by the server process to validate the user privileges?
(Choose one.)

A. buffer cache
B. library cache
C. data dictionary cache
D. redo log buffer cache

Q8) Which steps should you take to gather information about checkpoints?
(Choose one)

A. Set the LOG_CHECKPOINTS_TO_ALERT initialization parameter to TRUE.
Monitor the alert log file.
B. Set the LOG_CHECKPOINT_TIMEOUT parameter.
Force a checkpoint by using the FAST_START_MTTR_TARGET parameter.
Monitor the alert log file.
C. Set the LOG_CHECKPOINT_TIMEOUT parameter.
Force a log switch by using the command ALTER SYSTEM FORCE LOGSWITCH.
Force a checkpoint by using the command ALTER SYSTEM FORCE CHECKPOINT.
Monitor the alert log file.
D. Set the FAST_START_MTTR_TARGET parameter to TRUE.
Force a checkpoint by using the command ALTER SYSTEM FORCE CHECKPOINT.
Monitor the alert log file.

Q9). During a checkpoint in an Oracle9i database, a number of dirty database buffers covered by the log being checkpointed are written to the data files by DBWn.

Which parameter determines the number of buffers being written by DBWn?
(Choose one)
A. LOG_CHECKPOINT_TARGET
B. FAST_START_MTTR_TARGET
C. LOG_CHECKPOINT_IO_TARGET
D. FAST_START_CHECKPOINT_TARGET

Q10). You set the value of the OS_AUTHENT_PREFIX initialization parameter to OPS$ and created a user account by issuing this SQL statement:
(Choose Two)
CREATE USER OPS$smith
IDENTIFIED EXTERNALLY;

Which two statements are true? (Choose two.)

A. Oracle server assigns the DEFAULT profile to the user.
B. You can specify the PASSWORD EXPIRE clause for an external user account.
C. The user does not require CREATE SESSION system privilege to connect to the database.
D. If you query the DBA_USERS data dictionary view the USERNAME column will contain the value SMITH.
E. The user account is maintained by Oracle, but password administration and user authentication are performed by the operating system or a network service.

Q11). A network error unexpectedly terminated a user's database session.

Which two events occur in this scenario? (Choose two.)

A. Checkpoint occurs.
B. A fast commit occurs.
C. RECO performs the session recovery.
D. PMON rolls back the user's current transaction.
E. SMON rolls back the user's current transaction.
F. SMON frees the system resources reserved for the user session.
G. PMON releases the table and row locks held by the user session.

Please correct me .
My answers are
1. B, E, F
2. C
3. B
4. B,C,D
5. C
6. A,C
7. C
8. B
9. B
10. A ,E
11. D ,G

I am preparing for OCP and these answers are doubtful in my mind which was provided by the Test material. So wanted to get the right answers.
Anyway whenever you feel like.
Please answer them.

Thanx

To whomever posted the questions, which OCP exam are those from the associate or professional? Those are tough!

Some of the questions are really theoretical cant be tested with Oracle, need to derive from experience/manuals.

Like questions 3 ,5 ,7 11.
There is no way to test them. It just theory. !!!!.

Its really tough to GET OCP-eed if we are junior.

Anyway thanx for your little tiny minute atomic(Only one Q answered) help. I understand its boring and frustrating thats what we go thru when we study for OCP as a Junior.
Experience will come eventually but first we need the Driver's License to drive..become an expert driver later.

Well hey, a multiple choice question with answers that could all possibly be wrong is touch in my book. I was also referring to how they were asked, not necessarily the subject matter. I did notice when looking at the study guides of useless (according to you but I agree) stuff like ratios.

I'd be happy to hear the situation for Q3 E isn't always true.

write any book on Oracle. ? I didnt understand your comment.

But give you back a Million Thanks for what you have done for the Oracle Community. See what you did to us..made us Oracle literates.

There are Some Questions even Tom cant answer !!!! Just provoking you ..kidding.

> a commit does not release all locks...

This is interesting! Can you elaborate?

In one session run this:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE COMMIT_ME
IS
PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;
BEGIN
COMMIT;
END COMMIT_ME;
/

CREATE TABLE T AS
SELECT *
FROM ALL_OBJECTS
WHERE ROWNUM = 1;

UPDATE T
SET OBJECT_NAME = 'NEW_NAME';

EXEC COMMIT_ME;

In a second session run:
UPDATE T
SET OBJECT_NAME = 'NEW_NAME';

Second session will be blocked until the first session commits even though COMMIT_ME committed.

I was confusing transactions with sessions for d) my mistake. I see why that makes sense.

However, e) you say "commits don't release locks, that's not what commits do" Can you explain why on the top of page 160 of Expert One on One, 3rd bullet you state:

"All locks held by our session are released, and everyone who was enqueued waiting on locks we held will be released?"

Just playing the devil's advocate so don't get ticked please, you said something about a debate right ;)

Bob,

Thats the whole point of an autonomous transaction, that it does not affect the main transaction. However a commit in the main transaction *will* release any locks that it has.

An autonomous transaction is a separate transaction. I guess the addendum ' that the transaction has acquired' was what I was thinking about

i.e. a commit does not release all locks that the transaction has acquired. <== This would be interesting.

"E. The user process notifies the server process that the resource locks can be released."

To me, that line seemed to imply all resource locks held by a user. The A Trans is a commit issued by the user that does not release all resource locks held by that user.

"B. The server process places the commit record in the redo log buffer."
Seems true to me, in what circumstance would a commit record not get put in the redo log buffer. (All be it to "instantly" get written by LGWR to the redo log files)


"C. Log Writer (LGWR) writes the redo log buffer entries to the redo log files and data files."

From the concepts guide LGWR is noted as only writing entries to the redo log files. It mentions nothing about writing to the data files, which would surely be the job of DBWR? So is (c) then false?


"D. The user process notifies the server process that the transaction is complete."
Seems quite debatable to me. The user process notifies the server to complete (as opposed to saying it is complete) the transaction by sending the commit, when the transaction is really complete, it must be the server process notifying the user process of the completion.


"E. The user process notifies the server process that the resource locks can be released."
Would that be a level of detail the user process would deal with at all? The concepts guide does specify what User Processes and Server Processes are about (though it doesn't go down to a huge level of detail). And it states this about server processes "Parse and run SQL statements issued through the application". It would seem then that the user process notifies the server process of the commit. It is the server process that then "infers" that involves releasing the locks rather than the user process explicitly saying "release locks".


I've seen many of these sort of questions and generally they don't appear that helpful, on two fronts.
(1) Is imprecision in language so we get these sort of debates as to what the question setter actually meant when writing the question and answers.
(2) there is rarely a detailed discussion on why any given answer is correct/incorrect.

Q1) Here is a blamk piece of paper. Draw a picutre of the oracke memory structures and explain them and thier purposes.
.
End of exam.

<< grin >>

"E. The user process notifies the server process that the resource locks can be released."

I should've said session above. Methinks "user process" is equivalent to "session". If you agree with that, then what you are saying above about autonomous transactions would seem to imply that an autonomous transaction opens a new "user process" (i.e. session). I can't seem to prove or disprove whether autonomous transactions create new sessions, but everything I have tried points to autonomous transactions are executed within the same session.

If you want to get certified just to have the credential, please don't. Do yourself, and the rest of those certified, a favor and use the certification process to improve your skills and add many more tools to your Oracle "toolbelt". Don't do the minimum amount of studying to just barely pass the exam. It cheapens the OCP credential for the rest of us and you will still not get the good jobs because interviewers still ask technical questions, even to OCP members.

I used the Self Test software, Oracle concepts guides and reference manuals to prepare. For the questions that I missed, I would read the relevant Oracle documentation and then retake the test, repeating the process until I knew the material in the practice exam.

Now when I interview I can correctly answer most technical questions and, more importantly, I have many more tools I can use to solve problems.

Learning the OCP subject material was one of the best things I did for my career. The OCP credential was a nice bonus.

this is a general question on Oracle Education...

I was planning to take OCP 9i exams(total 4 for ocp). Then 2 months ago I took an "INSTRUCTOR LED TRANNING" for 5 days. spent 3k on it as now oracle has made it as a requirement. I know what they taught :(

after that oracle education brought 10g cretification
i.e. 10g OCP only 2 exams !! ?

so I planned to take 10g rather than 9i . Now oracle tells me that I have to take ANOTHER ORACLE INTRUCTOR LED CLASS
to satisfy reuqirement. how about that ? I just took a class 2 months ago and now another ? 3k?

Hi Tom,

I have a Questions about
Oracle Certification Program


I have done the following oracle exams:

Introduction to oracle 9i:SQL exam cod:1z-007
oracle 9i Fundamentals 1 exam cod:1z0-031
oracle 9i Fundamentals 2 exam cod:1z0-032
oracle 9i Performance tuning exam cod:1z0-033

I passed all the exams.

I didn't do the Oracle OCP Hands-On Course. I have done the exams only.
My problem is i cannot get the OCP certificate because i didn't do the
OCP Hands-On Course. Can you help me?

i spoke to the manager of the
institute, he suggested that i do the 10g course, the upgrade. Then i
will get the certification of 10g and 9i. I dont have to register for
9i, he told me to register only for Oracle Database 10g: New Features for Administrators 10g,Exam Number: 1Z0-040 and i will get them both.Is
that true??

Regards,
Adel.Al Rayash

To Adel.Rayash
You should have been more careful and read the requirements for getting the OCP Certification. Anyways, it is not too late. Do a hands on training course in Oracle 9i from an AUTHORIZED Oracle Training Institute. You can get the list from Oracle's site. You do not have to undergo all the modules. Only 1 or 2 are important, I guess Fundamentals I or II.
Do them and then you can get the Oracle OCP Certificate.
After that for all the future versions you just have to clear an Upgrade Exam.
No more Hands On Courses Reqd.

Hope it helps.

Can I debug database function from developer form while debuging.

OK,I realise that I'm responding to comments left years ago, I've only just seen this thread.

On the subject of the importance of communication vs technical knowledge/ability. Some years ago I took the Oracle 9i OCP DBA track courses, the day I arrived at the training centre for the first course (SQL) I (along with the other trainees) was told that we should be in for a really good course as the trainer was one of the top Oracle trainers in the world. As it turned out he was the top Oracle trainer in Saudi Arabia, that was the problem. His English was abysmal, his very thick accent and tendancy to speak quietly made it even worse. We simply could not understand what he was saying and he seemed to have difficulty understanding us. I did speak to him on the lunch break of the first day and quickly got the impression that he really did know the material in great depth and was very knowledgable abvout Oracle products. He just could not communicate that in English to a roomful of English speakers at the speed required to deliver the course. I'm not saying that all trainers need to speak English well, I'm sure that delivering the course to a room full of Saudi students this trainer would have been sucessful, just that if you are delivering a course in English to a room full of English speakers in England then the ability to speak and comprehend English clearly should be pretty much a given. In this case we, the students, revolted and told the trainign centre that they had to either supply us with a tutor who spoke the same language as us (i.e. English) and was able to train competantly in that language or we would withdraw and get our employers to sue them for the costs of the course and costs of us being absent from work for those days. The next day we got a top flight English speaking trainer who delivered the whole course in 2.5 days in a way we could understand and then spent the Friday afternoon showing us some of the interesting stuff that is useful but not covered in the course.

On the usefulness of OCP. I'm always deeply cautious of certification programmes. I've seen far too many where the material the questions are based on seems to have been chosen because it's easy to write questions on rather than because it's somethign the majority of people are ever going to use in their career. The nail in the coffin of OCP for me was when I attended the aforementioned courses and every trainer (except the one from Saudi) started the course by saying "Is anyone planning to do the OCP exams? because I can teach you want you need to know to pass the exam or what you need to know to be a DBA, not both." Fortunately no-one was planning to do the exams.

I've been through a number of the sample exams and can frequently, and Tom said above, demonstrate why all the given answers are wrong to some degree, or at least not as absolutely correct as the question implies. I've also seen far too many simple, newbie, questions in online forums from people who claim to have OCP, even multiple OCPs.

Does anyone remember the good old days of 'chauncey certified oracle 7 database administrator'?

I don't know why people waster their time and money on OCPs or other vendor specific certifications. Why people don't read documentation.

People say..oh ,we are novice/beginners , we want to get job after ocp......My God, why you people don't go for basic computer science education (bcs,bs,mcs,ms ) and then get etnered into IT job or dba job.

In order to get knowledge of oracle dba, read oracle documentation. I have 10 years of oracle dba experience and in my interviews , I have realized that 99% OCPs do know now even right concept of log buffer,lgwr,red log and checkpoint . on the other hand 90% non-ocps gave us satisfied answers . Why.........because expereinced person read oracle docs ( whatever is your profession read documentation of your vendor product ...best point to start).

Tom has already mentioned this point many many times ....but still poeple are in a dilemma .....to do ocp or not !!!!

I don't know why people waste their time and money on OCP or other vendor specific certifications. Why people don't read documentation.

People say..oh ,we are novice/beginners , we want to get job after ocp......, why people don't go for basic computer science education (bcs,bs,mcs,ms ) and then get entered into IT job or dba job.

In order to get knowledge of oracle dba, read oracle documentation. In most of interviews, I have realized that 99% OCPs DO NOT know even right concept of log buffer,lgwr,red log and checkpoint . on the other hand 90% non-ocps gave us satisfied answers . Why.........because expereinced person read oracle docs ( whatever is your profession read documentation of your vendor product ...best point to start).

Tom has already mentioned this point many many times ....but still poeple are in a dilemma .....to do ocp or not !!!!

Hi tom,
In Ocp,we could n't able pass the exam without DUMPS.If we studied well without dump, we failed.but if we using only dumps,we scored more than 90%.i asked many OCPS ,they said that you can't pass the exam without dumps.why the oracle keeping these type of examination.is there any reason for that.please let me know any ideas to take the ocp exam without dumps.please any idea give the steps to be follow

As decision
May be it is possible if OCP will be two different types:
OCP who passed exams during beta testing (when it is not possible to have any dumps), Real OCP
OCP who passed exams after beta test, Just OCP
:)

Hi Tom,

I want to take OCP examination. But i know there are some mandatory training sessions. I have took most of them but without DBA workshop 1 and 2.

My question now is whether I can take the examination firstly? Let's say i passed it, i can get the my score or some other formal paper staff to prove i passed the exam. Then in future when i have time, expecially when i save enough money:), i take the training and get the final certificate. If so, how long it can be valid before i take the train?

My point is I need some kind of proveness that i am ok to be a DBA or at least i am ok to be a very DBA beginner and change my job from PL/SQL deverloper to DBA gradually.

Thank you very much.