Arien vs. The World

As I commented earlier in the blog (time sure goes fast; was that really 4 months ago??), at work we have as objective for all us Web Developers to pass the MySQL 5.0 Certification this year. This certification consists of two exams: MySQL Developer and MySQL DBA. Both of them have two parts, so that’s actually 4 tests to take. But we are only required to take the MySQL Developer ones, not the DBA.

MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide

For this task, we were given this huge book to study, 650 pages long! Although, we “only” need the first 350 that are aimed at the MySQL Developer exam. The book comes with a CD with some sample questions, although we’ve been told that these are much easier than the ones in the real exams, so I’m glad we’re having some practicing sessions at work to test our knowledge and share results together.

For the record, one of us already took the exam and passed without too much trouble (so it can be done, ha!). But gah, I dislike multi choice exams with passion… I’ve always been clumsy with this kind of exams, forgetting a bit here and there and… bleh. I’m confident that I can pass it, but I really want to get a good grade and multi choice isn’t the best for it.

But whatever, I’m getting all the bad thoughts from my mind and I’m going to do my best on this. I started reading the book and so far it seems easy, mainly because I’m refreshing things I’ve been using for almost 10 years. Things will start getting nastier in the second part of the book, I bet. I have seen views, stored procedures and triggers in the manuals, but never actually had the chance to use them (well, I did use views once, but just for testing purposes). The examples in the book seem very clear, hopefully it won’t be too boring and I’ll get quickly through all of it 🙂

Good luck to myself (and my colleagues)!