MySQL Certification User Story

The user story below was sent to us by a candidate who passed the Core exam and wishes to remain anonymous.

• Mike Hillyer has written about his experiences with the Professional exam in his blog.
• Nick Roper has written about his experiences with the Core exam here.

Do you have your own certification story that you want to share? Send it to us on certification@mysql.com!

My First Core SQL Certification Exam

I had some worries about taking the MySQL Core Certification Exam. Who wouldn't? Everyone knows that MySQL is a big field of study, and it isn't possible to know it all. So even if I think I'm pretty smart about some aspects -- and I do -- there was always the chance that the exam makers could grill me on stuff I'd never even looked at before.

And they did. But they were fair at the same time. Let me recount the whole experience ...

First, I got a memo from my company saying "you must get certified". No threats or cajolings, just a statement of the obvious fact that anybody who works at a job like mine should have the minimum qualification, a certified designation for MySQL. I expected this, and even though it was a hassle that I didn't need, I figured: well, it comes with the job. You don't get far with Oracle or Microsoft or IBM careers if you don't have the right papers, and that's the company that MySQL people travel with now that MySQL is a "serious" DBMS, so memos like this are inevitable. Of course, the company also offered to pay, so I had to figure: well, in the end, I'm getting the benefit at the company's expense.

So I logged on to the Pearson/VUE site, and looked for some place I could take the test. The first pleasant surprise -- there were actually several places in my home city (Edmonton), within easy biking distance. I picked a spot downtown, told them I had a "voucher" from my company, and got a list of free times when I could take the exam. In effect, the choice was: any business day, any business-hours time. So I was set: I had a place picked, I had a time, I clicked "go", and a few hours later I had my confirmation in a nice official manner.

Then it was time to hit the books. It's been a long LONG time since I've swotted for an exam, but I remembered the main part: read! study! don't go to the bar! defer leisure till the bloody thing is over! In my case, the things I concentrated on were:

On a Monday (always a good day since one can do the final cramming on the weekend without major distractions) I showed up for the exam at the appoing place and hour. I found that I was in a Microsoft training centre, but I can understand that -- not everybody is in the business of teaching MySQL exclusively (yet). The staff gave me no trouble after I'd surrendered my backpack and signed the "I will not disclose the questions" forms and shown them my passport and driver's license. They started me going at precisely the scheduled time, 1pm.

The way the test works is: I sit in front of the computer, I answer 70 questions. Most of them were multiple choice, though that could mean one of two things: "click the best answer" or "pick one or more of the answers". There were a few questions, probabl not more than a dozen or so, for which I had to "enter an SQL keyword" or "type in a command". I could go back and forth, and revise my answers at the end if I had time. The process was straightforward. I had no trouble figuring out what I was supposed to do.

Of course, that doesn't mean I had no trouble answering the questions, though. Some of the questions were indeed rather easy and I think a person who just knows basic SQL, or has some experience with another DBMS, would probably get 25 out of 70 questions right. Unfortunately that's not a passing grade, and I would say that the majority of the questions are very "MySQL specific". For example (not a real example but something in the same spirit) the question could be: "what will 'SELECT (enum_column), AVG(mediumint_column) FROM 7e' return?" and the answers can be (a) null/null, (b) b/5, (c) nothing because the statement is illegal". If you don't know about MySQL's data types and their peculiar behaviours, you wouldn't get past this sort of question. My advice: know your data types, understand complex queries (especially ones that involve multiple tables), memorize all that you can on import/export, and even try to get a feel for those introductory parts of the reference manual that you skipped. (MySQL expects you to know things about the license and about how open source works, and that's not fair if you just want to be a database technician, but too bad -- MySQL wants you to be part of the community too.)

On the other hand, I didn't run into any really tough stuff about replication, or the way that BDB stores integers, or the effect of simultaneous REPEATABLE READ transactions. The tip here is: if it's specifically mentioned in MySQL's "candidate guide" as something for the next level (the professional exam), then it's not a worry for us core folk. Of course, I'm only guaranteeing based on what I saw, and no two people take the same exam -- so don't relax yet.

I think that many people would benefit from taking one of the MySQL courses, since they're given by people who've passed the exam -- no doubt you could extort some good ideas from your instructor. I think as well that there will be some good material in the MySQL certification study guides, when they come out. But the main point of my discourse is: they are not an absolute necessity. If you have had some real experience in a MySQL environment, and you're willing to hit the books and do some serious study in advance, then the rest is easy. The makers of the exam did their job right, the givers of the exams (at least the ones that I had experience with) are pros, and most will find that the potential rewards exceed the risks.