OCM preparation

The OCM 10g Upgrade is currently under development, and the OCM 10g exam should be available in May.

How will I prepare for the 10g OCM?

Part I, get confident with the environment :
According to http://education.oracle.com/certification, the exam will be on redhat AS3 with DB 10.1.0.4. RHAS3 is not free. If I had not RH in my company, I would then probably use WhiteBox Linux or a similar RedHat clone to get an environment as close as possible to the lab. It seems very important to me is to get the same terminals (Gnome) and the same Browser (Mozilla 1.6).

I am trained to customized my environment within seconds. For example, I like to have a bookmark for 10G Book List, one for the Reference, one for SQL Reference, one for PL/SQL Packages Ref and one for RMAN Reference. So within one click, I can reach the appropriate book. I also like to shortcut most of my commands... I like to type pmon instead of ps -ef |grep ora_pmon and so I defined some aliases. I am able to define those below plus a few more obscure ones in less than one minute.


alias abort='echo shutdown abort|sqlplus -L -s / as sysdba'
alias alert='vi $ORACLE_HOME/admin/$ORACLE_SID/bdump/alert_$ORACLE_SID.log'
alias nomount='echo startup nomount quiet|sqlplus -L -s / as sysdba'
alias ora='cd $ORACLE_HOME'
alias pmon='ps -ef | grep [p]mon'
alias startup='echo startup quiet|sqlplus -L -s / as sysdba'
alias sysdba='sqlplus -L / as sysdba'
alias tns='cd $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin'


I have read man vi until my eyes hurt. I have trained using GNOME keyboard shortcuts until my finger skin burnt.

I have shortcut to set my oracle homes, and I am proficient with Unix commands.

With the few commands I defined, I am able to do most maintenance tasks and to call the oracle binaries like sqlplus faster than Lucky Luke.

I have read the SQL reference manual, the reference manual, and the RMAN reference manual.
I can type in less than two minutes the complete syntax for creating a database. I am familiar with the most commonly used character sets. I can create tablespaces, add and remove files (well, removing logfile and tempfiles only in 10gR1).

I have a bulletproof backup and recovery strategy. I know how to check critical ORA- message in the alert log, I can identify the missing files / directories on disk, I can recover from any error.

I know -almost- every listener.ora, sqlnet.ora (except the security related ones), and tnsnames.ora. I can create sqlnet.ora, listener.ora, tnsnames.ora, start and stop my listener within one minute.

Part II, read the specification
I print the documentation and I make sure I have understood the objectives. I try every scenario. In order to save time during the preparation, I am using scripts, so that I can generate a few databases quickly. For each scenario, I am generating errors. If you train with a collegue, try to generate the most surprising database corruption for your collegue at each scenario ;-)

There is a RAC scenario. I have received an Egenera blade to test Oracle Real Application Cluster, with up to 8 nodes. I documented in a previous post the steps I followed to install RAC on my notebook before receiving the Egenera hardware : Suse10 10gR2 Laptop Rac.

... invest enough time ... do not schedule it too early ... search for articles in Oracle magazine ...

Part III, relax
It is a nice challenge. Do sleep enough before the exam. Book a quiet hotel at least one day before. Do not work on the day before. Just rest.