Re: [NOVICE] PostgreSQL Training - Mailing list pgsql-general

Hi Christopher-- I think we are talking apples and oranges here.  Also sorry
for the delay in responding.  My son was born on Dec 16th, the day the
message was sent to which I am responding.

Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> Wrote:

> 1.  The businesses that are sufficiently "forward thinking" to
> consider using PostgreSQL may be thoughtful enough to be looking more
> for 'serious professionals.'

I agree to a point, and I am not disagreeing with the idea that serious
professionals are more valuable and provide more value for the salery than
paper cert holders.  But I have STILL seen many employers looking for paper
certs, especially in the small to midsize markets where the manager might
not know better.  I think that PostgreSQL has quite a bit to offer these
markets and it may take some re-education on our part and quite a bit of
advocacy to make it work.  Certification years or decades down the road
could be helpful here.
>
> 2.  It seems to me that the "IT Downturn" is starting to make the
> value of certifications like MCSE unravel.  From what I can see, most
> of the "certifications" were valuable to IT workers when the markets
> in the things certified were expanding.
>
To some extent that has been the case, but bear in mind that the candidate
screeners from HR don't always know how to spot a serious professional in a
given field, and for more menial work, the MCSE, et al save the screener
quite a bit of work.

> I think there are training documents; what needs to happen is to
> improve them.

Ok.  I see the tutorials, and there a few other documents there, but I see
the lack of a few things:
1:  Comprehensive list of skills that should be considered mandatory to
consider oneself competent at working with PostgreSQL
2:  A comprehensive training manual.  A short tutorial might be OK for a
newbie but if that is the extend you have people doing things like creating
one table per customer and not knowing how to manage the information in the
database.

The second depends on the first.  I have put together a tentative list (in
no particular order) for basic competence:
1: Understanding of what an RDBMS is.
2: Database design principles and normalization through third normal form
2a:  Understanding of data integrity issues (what does NULL mean, RI, etc.)
3:  Understanding of simple SQL selects, inserts, updates, and deletes.
4:  Understanding of basic views, rules, SQL language user defined
functions.
5:  Understanding of permissions and security.
6:  Understanding of common data types and how to create tables.
6a:  Understanding REFERENCES constraints and ON UPDATE/ON DELETE modifiers.
7:  How to install PostgreSQL on Windows via Cygwin and *NIX from source.

Anyone have anything else to add?

For more advanced competency, I would add higher normal forms, PLPGSQL, and
a few other things.

>
> And I think the notion of certification is quite distant down the
> road...

As I have said-- years or decades.  But having a well reviewed suggested
standard of skills would not only allow that to happen *if* the market would
support it, but also provide better value to our newbie community than any
of the other open source RDBMS's.  That is, IMO, where we should be focusing
our attention, and certification, if and when it happens can be purely an
afterthought.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers