You may have already seen the news: Oracle is launching an updated certification for MySQL Developers, based on MySQL Server 5.6.  This is exciting to me for several reasons that I want to share:

Only one exam

Earlier versions of the MySQL Developer certification required sitting for two separate exams.  One goal in redefining the certification process was to make it more accessible to candidates, and reducing the cost – in both time and money – developers need to invest in examinations.  This obviously presented a challenge to cover the same material – actually more, when you consider MySQL 5.6 features – in fewer questions, but we feel we’ve done it.

Content from the experts

Content creation for this exam has drawn from many different volunteers from a wide range of MySQL teams including Training, …

The MySQL for Database Administrators training course is the flagship course of the authentic MySQL curriculum.

To bring this 5-day, instructor-led course to the largest number of students at their convenience, this course is not only available at a wide-selection of locations around the world, but also through two delivery methods where there is no travel required:

• Training-on-Demand: Take this course from your own desk at your own pace, following lecture material through streaming video and setting your own schedule to perform lab exercises.
• Live-Virtual Class: Attend a live class from your own desk.

In addition to these no-travel …

Want to prove your expertise with MySQL? Why not get certified.

Oracle has just announced the release of the new MySQL Certification Path including the:

• Oracle Certified Professional, MySQL 5.6 Developer (OCP)
• Oracle Certified Professional, MySQL 5.6 Database Administrator (OCP)

You can register for these certification exams from today. Learn more about these certifications on the Oracle University blog.

Successful candidates will require a strong MySQL experience. Although …

With 2 of the bigger Open Source projects I care about talking about certifications programs questions pop up again ...

Should we certify ourselves ?

So let me tell you about my experiences in getting Open Source related Certifications ..

Over a decade ago, (2001) when RedHat was still Redhat and not yet Fedora the company I was working for was about to partner with RedHat and needed to get a number of people certified for that.

So I took the challenge, I bored myselve to death during a 4 day RedHat fast track training and set out to do the exam the next day. Obviosly I scored pretty well given my yearlong experience in the subject. Back then I was told that I scored the one but European Record on the exam which was actually held by another collegue (hey Ico) , our CTO however was not amused when I told that I could have scored better but I didn't bother running a chkconfig smb  on since I …

What will be first? The new and updated MySQL certification or the new OSS-DB exam which is announced by LPI in Japan?

The OSS-DB is only for PostgreSQL for now, but will cover more opensource databases in the future.

There seem to be two levels:

• 
  
• Silver: Management consulting engineers who can improve large-scale database
  
• Gold: Engineers who can design, development, implementation and operation of the database

The google translate version can be found here. I found this info on Tatsuo …

Effective June 1, 2011, MySQL certification exams will be offered exclusively through a new test delivery partner — Pearson VUE — and will no longer be available through Prometric. This will consolidate all Oracle Certification exams within the operations of a single testing vendor so we can provide better service and global testing coverage for these Oracle certification exams. Pearson VUE currently has over 5,000 test centers worldwide in 165 countries.

To help prepare you for this transition, here are some important dates for you to be aware of:

• If you are currently following a certification path and are planning to take an exam on/after June 1: Registration has began at Pearson VUE on May 16, 2011 for all scheduled exams on or after June 1. Visit pearsonvue.com/oracle to create a new web account and get started.
• …

According to the Oracle website the following certifications are available for MySQL:

• Oracle Certified Associate, MySQL 5.0/5.1/5.5
• Oracle Certified Professional, MySQL 5.0 Developer
• Oracle Certified Professional, MySQL 5.0 Database Administrator
• Oracle Certified Expert, MySQL 5.1 Cluster Database Administrator

There were two new versions released since MySQL 5.0. MySQL 5.0 was released in …

There will not be a May meeting of the North Texas MySQL Users Group but I am scrambling to get us a great location for the June meeting. I have left my Job with MySQL/Sun/Oracle and am no longer responsible for MySQL Certifications. That means my access to the Sun office were we have been meeting is ended also.

I am now the Customer Service Manager for Calpont and the InfiniDB storage engine. InfiniDB is column based, multi-threaded, and the community edition is open source. If you run intensive reports against InnoDB or MyIsam databases, you need to investigate this product. And if you regularly run massive queries in data warehousing or business analytic operation that you need to see how the massively parallel process architecture of the enterprise product can make life easier.

270 folks took MySQL Certification exams in July and 118 earned certifications. This is our best month outside of our annual Users Conference. For the fiscal year, MySQL Certifications were up 150.27% over the previous year.

Since the program inception, we had almost 8,000 exams taken and over 3,300 certifications. Not bad but it pales in comparison to Java exams and certifications.

Prometric is our new testing partner. Those of you with unexpired Pearson VUE vouchers can request a exchange by contacting Certification@sun.com with your Voucher ID number. And those of you wishing to sign up for the exams (they are part of the Sun 310-series at http://www.prometric.com/Sun/default.htm) need to contact you local Sun sales office to purchase a voucher.

And the North Texas MySQL Users Group meets tonight -- see http://www.northtexasmysql.org for details.

A few interesting KPIs about certified people and their current location (the fact that many people travel from one country to the other for work is very popular these days especially in the IT sector): Before starting to read, I am hereby assuming the MySQL list of MCDBAs is on a residence basis not citizenship. There are [...]