Monday, April 8, 2002		Article

RITU Punj of Ludhiana believes in the maxim, "opportunity does not fall in your lap, it has to be hunted out." No wonder then she has become the first person in Punjab to achieve the distinction of becoming an Oracle Certified Associate - Database Administrator for Oracle 9i. Interestingly, Ritu has achieved the distinction much before professional institutes and educational institutions began offering this course.

Her achievement has been personally recognised by the Oracle Corporation's Senior Vice President, Mr. John L. Hall, in a letter to Ritu. Reacting to her achievement Ritu Punj says:" Currently IT industry is going through a downtrend. In its past 20 years history this may be termed as the most critical phase for software developers. International certification is the need of the hour in the fast changing corporate world. The latest OCP DBA certification for Oracle 9i was the most challenging, so I opted for this compared to other certifications".

Following the feat, she has been appointed the technical head of an authorised Oracle education partner institute at Ludhiana. The job involves imparting of training for Oracle certification. Oracle has come to be known as the fastest and most efficient database management package and is widely used by he Internet-based businesses, such as British Telecom and the world's biggest online bookstore, Amazon.com.

Beginning January this year, Oracle Corporation officially announced its 9i DBA certification program that features a new, three-tier structure, as well as online testing and a hand-on lab component. The 9i DBA program consists of three levels namely - Oracle Certified Associate (OCA), Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) and the Oracle Certified Master (OCM). Oracle Corporations itself suggest OCA DBA program for those with 'Apprentice - Level" skills. To achieve this, candidates must pass the Introduction to Oracle 9i: SQL and Oracle 9i: Fundamentals I exams.

To achieve OCP DBA candidates must pass the following exams in addition to the above-mentioned exams for OCA DBA. These are the Oracle 9i Database: Fundamentals II and the Oracle 9i Database: Performance Tuning. To become Master's certified, candidates must first achieve the OCP DBA, and then attend two 'advanced' Oracle technology-training courses. After that, candidates must pass a hands-on lab exam held in an Oracle testing environment. Full detains on these lab exams have yet to be released and the new curriculum has been implemented less than a week ago.

Ritu, already an OCP in the Application Development Track for Oracle 8i, is still not satisfied with being able to get the Oracle Certified Associate - Database Administrator for Oracle 9i, so she is currently preparing for the OCP 9i DBA Certification. She also proposes to pursue the OCM DBA (Oracle Certified Masters — Database Administrator) in the near future.