Monday, February 20, 2006

Certification

I live within 5 minutes of my local Borders bookstore. I'm pretty familiar with the computer selection there and have mostly been satisfied with their selection. Looking for some variety, I went to a not-so-local mega Barnes & Noble today to peruse their computer section.

I spent quite a bit of time looking over their selection and noticed something missing, Oracle Certification books. I got to thinking and my local Borders only had a couple books on Oracle Certification and about 3 shelves on Microsoft Certification.

Just a couple of years ago, books for the OCP were plentiful and filled a lot of shelf space. I remember there were two or three publishers with their own series.

Is it just my location of the country? Does it say something about Oracle's certification process? Or has the demand for OCPs weakened over the years?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm on board with Dave's thinking. "No OCP, school of hard knocks!"
OCP is just another way for Oracle to extract money from you and I'm hoping that the industry is realizing this as well.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but compare the the OCP track of 9i to 10g.
***Certified Associate******
9i.... SQL exam then the 9i fundamentals exam.
10g.... 10g Admin exam.

Geee look, you don't even have to know SQL anymore! Woohoo!
Show me a DBA who doesn't know SQL and I'll show you someone who should be considering a career change.

Uhhhhh what's a V dollar view???

Anonymous said...

Or maybe it is that the oracle OCP books are actually selling a little while the microsoft ones just sit on the shelf?

Jeff Hunter said...

Or maybe it is that the oracle OCP books are actually selling a little while the microsoft ones just sit on the shelf?

Hmm. Possible. Not very probable, put possible.

my word: asepx - microsoft's next version of asp (active server enterprise pages eXtraspecial)?

Anonymous said...

My local Borders has cut the size of their computer book section in half, and Oracle books generally have gone from nearly an entire bookshelf unit to about one shelf. At my local Barnes and Noble, it's more dramatic. OCP books are almost impossible to find now. Have the booksellers decided in the past year that the market for computer books is disappearing?

Anonymous said...

Just my opinion but I think the lack of books in the store is due to the probability that most people who buy such books order them online. The books mentioned are for a rather specialized audience and if the buyers are like me, they look for the discounts offered when buying the books online. I have noticed fewer and fewer computer-related books on the local Barnes and Noble shelves lately.

Regarding the comment by oracledoc, if the SQL portion of the certification process hasn't been incorporated into the current 10g exams, all is lost. Can anyone shed any light on whether or not this is the case?