On Sun, 2004-01-18 at 20:51, Johannes Franken wrote: > * Marc Dver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-01-18 18:30 +0100]: > > 1. What is the format of the test questions? I.e., are they multiple > > choice, free answer, essay, etc.? > > They are multiple-choice (but very tricky) and fill-in-the-gaps. > For example: > > "Assume a column in a MyISAM table has type VARCHAR, BLOB, or TEXT. > Which of the following specifies this table type correctly to save > space? > Mark all answers that are wrong: > [ ] ROW_FORMAT=Static > [ ] ROW_FORMAT=default > [ ] ROW_FORMAT=dynamic > [ ] ROW_FORMAT=compressed > [ ] all of the above > [ ] none of the above"
I think I need to clarify a few details regarding this: First of all, we've done all that we possibly could do to remove "double negatives" in the exam questions. We very rarely ask "which of the following are NOT true". Only when the question or answer texts would become much more complicated without this structure, have we submitted to it. And when we do so, we make it very clear what we are asking. There are indeed "All/None of the above" answers for a few question items. However, because of the way the exams are structured, I can promise you that if you were to go to the exam today, you would only see one (if any) of this type of questions during the entire exam. Now, I'm not saying all this to put Johannes or his observations down -- going to an exam *is* a stressful experience and people do come out with (amazingly) different accounts of what they thought was going on during the exam. During internal testing of the exams, I had MySQL employees be subjected to the exact same set of questions. Afterward, they gave me completely different accounts of their experience: some felt that more than half the questions had been on import/export (it was in fact around 5%); others were saying that they thought there were too many fill-in the blanks questions (on that particular test, they were subjected to *two* such questions during the exam). > > Are they theory based or is it fact based, i.e., memorize the books to > > pass? > > For the CORE certification, it's balanced. In many cases they show you > some tables's contents and you have pick either the statements which do > some job, or the result if you rune some statement. For this type of > questions, memorizing the books is just not enough. You need to > *understand* the facts. > > For the PROFESSIONAL certification, it's different. Here you don't need > SQL, but you should memorize every aspect of performance- and > security-tuning. ...and again, you need to *understand* how things work. Mere fact memorization won't see you through (which is not contrary to Johannes' statement; I just think it's important to highlight it). I have heard from some candidates that they regard the Core exam as being more of a "memorization" exam than Professional. Which only goes to show, once again, that perceptions differ quite a bit as people come out of the testing room. Best regards, / Carsten -- Carsten H. Pedersen Coordinator of Development, Certification Manager MySQL AB, http://www.mysql.com Want to swim with the dolphins? (April 14-16, 2004) http://www.mysql.com/uc2004/ -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
