Re: Certification

The views expressed below are my own and personal...

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015, 10:45 PM Joshua Kramer <joskra42(dot)list(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

There is something I haven't seen in this discussion- a comparison of
certification types. Julyanto commented, "1. There are many thousands
of Question which is groups into same level of difficulties.
(weight)"

This is not always the case. The certifications that are really worth
something- RedHat's RHCE and I believe some Cisco certs- do not base
their certification on correct answers to questions.

Here's what I've heard about RedHat. When you go to take the RHCE
exam, they sit you in front of a computer with a real OS install.
Then they tell you, "Something is broken with this system; also,
Services A, B, and C need to be installed and configured properly.
You need to fix all of the problems and install the services. You
have 3 hours and you can use any resource at your disposal except for
Internet. GO!" This type of exam is difficult or impossible to do a
brain-dump for. They make the issues so complex that you really have
to know your stuff *and be able to think and use that information* in
order to pass.

Unless you plan to have a new set of scenarios every month, it is pretty
much possible to have a brain dump for this as well. And at the same time
people/organization designing it will have an upper edge in offering a
training customized to help candidates pass the kind of scenarios thrown to
them. Oracle's OCP and OCM has such procedures for one to attain a
certificate and I have interviewed OCPs who can not differentiate Redo Log
and Undo Tablespace very well. What I am trying to say is its very
difficult to get over the curse of brain dumps.

I agree with Josh and much more strongly with Robert Hass about the content
design, advocacy and quality questions and mode of examination.

I think a Postgres certification should be like that- action based
rather than recall based.

I guess before we think about certification in line with LF, I think we all
must see what is the problem we are trying to address?
I believe rather than introducing certifications what might make more sense
is to introduce PostgreSQL as a platform for teaching RDBMS in graduation
schools. Today most of the colleges (in India and ASEAN) which I know about
uses Oracle as an example to Teach RDBMS. I believe that you need to have
ample resources at various levels (associate, pro, adv ) to roll out a
proper certification matrix and also a much larger adoption. While
certification will certainly push for more resources available, it is not
much useful without training program (like what Robert pointed out).

On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 6:10 PM, julyanto SUTANDANG
<julyanto(at)equnix(dot)co(dot)id> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Please allow me to share my ideas, I have been following this discussion
and
> very interested since beginning..
> First of all, let think that PostgreSQL even it is open source is playing
> major role in Business and even mission critical apps which involved
> potential risk of human lives.
> So, PostgreSQL can be considered as serious business in a way.
>
> In the other hand, yes. Certification sometimes look as low, business
> oriented, etc. BUT, this is the first impression and the countable one
> record on paper which can be rely on by some people which want to use Our
> Expertise, Our skill, and our experience. Anyway, as serious business,
> PostgreSQL needs to have it, in order to filter out incapable person
which
> potentially creates PostgreSQL a bad name, or even risks lives.
> In my imagination, Certification process is:
> 1. There are many thousands of Question which is groups into same level
of
> difficulties. (weight)
> 2. Every question is multiple choices but the answer is very similar.
> 3. Question conducts in online, random questions and random position of
the
> mutliple choices.
> 4. Number of Question per session is about one fifth of the all test in a
> test bank.
> 4. That is the first level of Ceritification, the Second level perhaps
> should be done in Class/Labs Hands On.
> 5. Even the first Level, but there are some Basic, Intermediate and
Advanced
> one.
>
> In Certification business, usually there are 2 institution involved. One
is
> the Test Maintainer, and the Second is Test Conductor which is who
actually
> implement and operate the test. And in the ecosystem, we would have many
> institution which offers training, and etc to help ppl can pass the test
> well. The Test Maintainer is also doing reviews of the Test Bank, and did
> revision in times. Test Conductor can be done automatically but still
there
> are some ppl operates and maintains. We can and we should charge ppl which
> did the test, and any institution which conduct training can be registered
> as the Partner of the Test Maintainer, and paid some amount yearly.
> Test Maintainer is the Comitee which consist of groups of ppl which
> dedicated for this. Any of the money raised from this business will goes
to
> maintain PostgreSQL Global Development Group and the Test Maintainer (also
> test Conductor)
>
> We are a not talking about business here, but we are talking about
> PostgreSQL, and PostgreSQL is business thing, we should keep it good and
> professional. Having certification ecosystem is one thing that we can make
> to help community outside off developers (which is business community),
and
> also help PostgreSQL itself maintained by great and capable person.
>
> Let's have a Test Maintainer Commitee, this should be filled by some
> PostgreSQL Hackers, Gurus, etc. That is peak, that is the summit.
>
> EDB's Cert in a way (especially in ASEAN), may be because they lack of
> knowlegde, considered by some ppl as the commercial part of PostgreSQL.
This
> kind of perception borrows from others kind of business model, such as
> jboss, jaspersoft, etc (which actually commercial but declare as open
source
> to gain more marketing side from word of mouth), and really not true for
> PostgreSQL.

I don't agree to this entirely. But I am afraid that my views would be seen
as biased.

PS: My employers are EDB partner and I am a trainer myself I will keep my
views restricted.

>
> Well, that only ideas and proposal, any input?
>
> Thanks and Regards,
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:29 AM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:06 AM, Michael Meskes <meskes(at)postgresql(dot)org>
>> wrote:
>> >> I think the difficult that we're likely to run into doing this as a
>> >> community project is that coming up with a certification program
>> >> involves somebody making decisions as to what material will be
>> >> included in the certification and what material will not. Generally,
>> >> if you have 5 community members, they will have 6 opinions on any
>> >> given topic, so getting cross-company agreement on exactly what should
>> >> be part of a certification exam sounds hard. If the content of that
>> >
>> > Why so we need cross-company agreement? Are those of us that work for
>> > one of
>> > the PostgreSQL-related companies no longer community members and only
>> > allowed
>> > to speak on behalf of their employer? Actually I'm pretty sure this is
>> > not
>> > what you want to say Robert.
>>
>> I think you're reading something into what I wrote that wasn't really
>> there.
>>
>> >> exam is known in detail to some companies and not others, those
>> >> companies have a major advantage in preparing a training curriculum
>> >> that will let people pass the exam. If the content of the exam is
>> >> ...
>> >
>> > They way the Linux Foundation handled the Linux certs, they also
>> > developed an
>> > online training course. If they did the same for PostgreSQL the
>> > curriculum
>> > would be public anyway.
>>
>> How would they develop such a course, except with the help of
>> PostgreSQL community members?
>>
>> > However, this does not take away the need for in-class
>> > trainings run by companies, nor does it remove the need for special
>> > certifications against some companies' products. But again, I wonder
why
>> > we as
>> > community discuss commercial details of some companies' business
models.
>>
>> I am not sure that certification has much use apart from such
>> commercial details. I would not personally be willing to spend time
>> developing curriculum for a certification unless somebody paid me to
>> do it. And the only reason that I can imagine somebody paying me to
>> do it is if it increased the value of a training class which the
>> person or organization paying that money was also providing.
>>
>> Now, it could be that I just need a better imagination. However, in
>> my experience, curriculum development is a lot of work. If it's done
>> for free, I think it's not likely to be high quality. And if it's
>> high quality, I think it will be because people with experience in
>> both PostgreSQL and curriculum development got paid to spend a lot of
>> time creating it, and then more time updating it each time a new
>> release comes out. I would be very happy if someone volunteered to do
>> all of that work on an ongoing basis for no money and then did a great
>> job. I would be even happier if some company volunteered to fund that
>> work on an ongoing basis in a way that benefited not only that company
>> but the whole community. Although I would be happy about those
>> outcomes, I do not think that they are likely. We can seek volunteers
>> for small tasks, but for things that take really large chunks of time
>> people usually need to be paid.
>>
>> --
>> Robert Haas
>> EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
>> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Julyanto SUTANDANG
>
> Equnix Business Solutions, PT
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