Wednesday, April 1, 2009

DBA 5.1 Exam Contents, Part 3 of 3

The optional section of the MySQL 5.1 DBA exam is a series of ten tasks and the candidate has to complete at least five of them. The five mandatory tasks are tests of core MySQL skills and the optional section is a test of other skills a candidate may have acquired.

All of these tasks can be completed in many different ways. For instance the first mandatory task includes removing three accounts. This can be done in one or more SQL statements. The candidate is graded on IF they accomplished the task and not the method used to accomplish the task.
The Optional Tasks

  1. Copy a database

  2. Create a fulltext search

  3. Create a view to select certain data from a table

  4. Alter a table

  5. Update a compressed table

  6. Create a recurring event

  7. Update a global variable

  8. Use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA data in views to return instance information

  9. Import a CSV file

  10. Partition or repartition a table


Once again, do at least five of these optional tasks. It is suggested that a candidate do more that just in case the task is a little more complex or has a subtle twist not apparent at first site.

What the heck does that mean? For instance, one early tested created an event following the information from the help command on the mysql command line client. But it was not a recurring event, just a one time event. That was a simple mistake but costly.


Next up: Getting ready for exams at the User Conference! Yes, there are short cuts to make your testing experience EASIER at the UC.

5 comments:

Walter Heck said...

Hey Dave,

these new certfications exams look a lot more interesting then teh dry questioning for 5.0 :)
Little question: it is unclear to me wether the certfication exams at the UC are 5.0 o 5.1? Would be great if you could clear that up :)

regards,

Walter

Dave Stokes said...

Walter -- read the next installment. Basically we will be offering everything we can.

Walter Heck said...

looking forward to it already ;)

Douglas Rosenberg said...

Will the system be windows or linux or does it matter for any of the task?

Dave Stokes said...

Douglas -- The majority of our MySQL for DBA classes are on Windows, and Sun's Remote Lab Data Center that hosts the exam offers Windows or Solaris, and it was decided to go with Windows.

In development of the exam, it was easy to see that there were some tasks that would be impossible due to permission problems if UNIX or Linux (or Solaris or BSD or ...) that could be done with Windows.

I have developed a Linux analog that we have used with a couple of classes but it is harder for certification candidates to coordinate all the pieces while testing.