During the MySQL User’s Conference in Japan, we’re offering people the opportunity to test their knowledge with a practice exam. The exams are going to be available in Japanese as of Sept. 25.

Today, we upped the ante a bit when Pearson VUE were so kind as to bring along some very nice prizes to hand over to those that answered all questions right.

Attaining those prizes turned out to be a lot harder than we expected… it took several hours before we finally got a winner and I got to hand over a nice notebook to none other than Kei Sakai from the MySQL Nippon Association.

Thanks again to Pearson VUE for not only being here at the conference …

It’s now officical: Japanese translations of the Developer and Database Administrator certification exams will be available all over Japan as of September 25. As usual, the exams will be delivered through Pearson VUE.

We’re obviously pretty excited about this, and so are visitors to the MySQL Japan User’s Conference that is going on right now. Pearson VUE are here with two testing stations that have a few sample exam questions. Visitors have a lot of fun testing their own MySQL knowledge.

If you’re in or near Tokyo, you can …

If you’re good at English and skilled at using MySQL, you should know that we have recently posted an opening for a certification exam writer to bolster the maintenance and creation of new MySQL certification exams.

It’s a job with a lot of aspects: Targeting new MySQL products, translations, updating our exams to match the evolving features of the existing products, and much more. There is much work to do, but too few heads and hands to put to the task of doing all this.

What I’m looking for is a person who has the right combination of excellent written English-language skills, careful attention to details, and of course good working knowledge of MySQL. If you have experience working with training materials or testing, all the better!

Your skills in producing error-free, well-constructed writing is the most important aspect of the job. If you have technical skills, such as PHP programming, great! …

After taking a well earned break from studying, I dusted off my copy of the MySQL Certification Guide and lost my head again for a good 4 days or so.

My goal this time was to achieve Certified MySQL 5.0 Developer through upgrading my Core certification - sounds easy right?.

That’s what I though. I totally underestimated this exam, thinking it was just an upgrade and that the questions would be straightforward, after all there are only 60 questions in this exam compared to the 70 per exam for DBA!.

Having spent less time this year writing code, …

The Certified MySQL Associate certification that we’ve mentioned a few times by now will be available in all Pearson VUE testing centers as of Wednesday, July 18 2007.

Yay!

It’s not an exam that will impress hard-core DBAs with years of experience, but I actually expect quite a lot of this certification. The Developer and DBA certifications are pretty tough, and in many cases go beyond what you need, at least for an entry-level position. With the Associate certification, you get good proof that you know the basics of MySQL without straining yourself or your wallet.

The exam has 50 questions, and lasts for one hour. It’s also somewhat less expensive than the other exams. Unlike other MySQL certifications, the Associate exam does not carry a version number and is regarded as perpetually valid once you have obtained it (we do, however, …

After having a week to recover from the first exam I finally got around to taking the second one….and passed!!

Part II of the MySQL DBA Certification focused a lot more on the day to day running of the server, compared to Part I which was very much installation / configuration based.

Studying for the exam was a little difficult as I also had to work this week (as opposed to being on holiday!), but the skills you gain can be directly applied to everyday management of MySQL, and can be very rewarding especially if you focus on optimisation.

So what next you ask? Well after getting this far I thought it only fair that I give something back to the MySQL Community in the form of a MoinMoin Macro - …

While checking out the new features due for MySQL 6.0 (Falcon) the other day, I happened to browse my way past the Certification pages to see if anything had changed - am I glad I did!

It was during my browsing that I noticed the Important Information that detailed a typsetting error with the voucher expiry date found in the MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide……..the same guide that had been sat on my lounge floor for the last few months…..

Quickly flipping through the pages I found the voucher that offered 25% off your exam and then went …

Roland’s giving his talk on MySQL Stored Procedures at the e Dutch PHP conference. Mostly basics, but with a good extended focus on how work with SPs from PHP.

It’s obviously something that interests people: Quite an audience has shown up even though most have never even gotten as far as reading the manual sections on SPs, much less attempted to use them.

Highlights:

• mysqlnd is a native driver for PHP, i.e. it’s written in pure PHP and does not depend on libmysql. Should be …

For the intensely curious, these are the final results from DEV, DBA and Cluster certification examinations at the MySQL Conference 2007.

Yes, that’s right — you can get MySQL certified for no cost at all.

“How does this work?” I hear you ask.

Step 1: Attend the MySQL Conference & Expo (If you haven’t already signed up, that particular part isn’t quite “free” of course. But that just begs the question “Why haven’t you done that yet? It’s only a few days away!)

Step 2: Locate Carsten, Roland or one of the other people from the MySQL certification team there. On Tuesday, we will be outside the Magnolia room (where the exams take place) during testing hours. You can also catch people on Monday, when they are giving primer tutorials on the Cluster, …