Whats missing in the SQL Certification process?
Brent Ozar has just posted a nice interview with Joe
Sack about the Microsoft Certfied Master process.
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/02/mcm-prep-week-interview-with-joe-sack/
Brent asks about the gap between the MCM and the normal cert process, He
nicely side stepped the point about this and said the MCM is appropriate for a
DBA.
Firstly I don't know of any company that will let someone go on training for
3 weeks solid. Whats more they really need prep time before and possible retake
time after. I therefore don't see the MCM as for the masses and that leaves a
gaping hole between the current cert process and the MCM.
Having someone competent in doing a recovery shouldn't require them to be an
MCM. However give me an MCDBA, can I be comfortable in them being able to do a
recovery. NO.
Yeh so they can probably find the answer on the web and in a book, but we all
know that when the *** hits the fan, you shouldn't be looking things up on
Bing/Google to find the answer when your site is down and losing money.
I know some guys in the industry are looking at what to
do about this and I applaud them. An example is the foundation program being run
by Pragmaticworks http://www.bidn.com/blogs/DevinKnight/ssis/394/pragmatic-works-foundation-class-introduction
This will be a slow process but I feel that some sort of apprentice scheme
has to be the way forward. Whilst I still agree this won't appeal to the masses
that get certification it definitely will be achievable than the current
MCM.