New vendor-neutral database certification

This March you can start earning a vendor-neutral 'certification focuses on universal database design principles and SQL. Aimed at database programmers and administrators alike, the exam helps solve the problem of poorly designed databases and validates foundational knowledge of any database, regardless if it’s Oracle, IBM, DB2, MySQL or others.'

The good folks at at CIW-Certified.com have the details at http://www.ciw-certified.com/exams/1d0541.asp and I wish them luck. It is very hard to stay vendor neutral and cover enough detail. The LPI Linux exams felt stunted to me on areas like backup, software updates, and best practices. My fingers are cross that the CIW folks have all those sort of problems worked out of their exam. I will look into this cert when March rolls around.

I recently got my eyes opened to a lot of things in Oracle world from meeting George Trujillo , one of MySQL's Senior Instructors at the recent All Company Meeting. George, aside from being an amazing guy, was able to explain in clear detail how bind variables and executions plans work in the Oracle environment in a way that sunk in with me. All great stuff but it would not be on a vendor-neutral exam. Maybe we need a series like the 'Dummies' books that covers one vendors DB for experienced DBAs from another vendor's DB.

My experience with database design in the real world never matched what you would find in textbooks. One company still used data column names with rules left over from punch card days that sought to minimize the use of vowels. And different projects would use the same three to five letter vowel-less names over so that you would never know if 'stckhnd' was 'stock on hand' or if the item has a stick for a handle, 'stick handled'. Then came the Java happy years where variables reached new lengths and tested your typing skills. Looking up a variable became a genealogical exercise of often overloaded proportions.

Hopefully this new certification can establish itself and rid the world of 'stckhnd' type problems forever.