Re: Certification and SRA - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Having taken part in the "Certification Available + Pronounce thread",
and thought about it, I think the other guys are right.

The SRA certification would suffice.

I think, it would be better to put efforts into really good RDBMS
tutorial documentation - make them the best out there, and therein
target the Universities. Universities i'm sure will link to these
excellent resources, and the knock on effect would be to get beginners
a) learning RDBMS the right-way, and b) with a slant towards PostgreSQl
usage.

Really good get-up-and-running documentation, and examples of
graduate-year style sample projects - and hints and tips on and
good-practice, database design, and compatibility issues explained would
be most beneficial.

This way, you get open-source training - improving the quality of
new-comer's knowledge of RDMBS's (They'll read till the cows come home
if it means they get help on there projects and learn key database-point
that they can impress in their reports). This well trained new wave will
then (I think) provide the best means of securing the brightest future
for PostgreSQL and database systems of the future etc.
Chris Travers wrote:

> Robert Bernier wrote:
> <snip>
>
>> The second fact that I want to bring up concerns PostgreSQL
>> certification itself. The challenge we face is that at this time
>> there is no community derived certification for PostgreSQL. But....
>> in my opinion (I'm not speaking for the company now folks)
>> certification is valid and worthwhile when the standards it follows
>> has been developed on a community/consensual basis. So do how we
>> develop a standard that will be of high quality and accepted by the
>> community?
>>
>>
>>
> How many people are interested in participating?  How do we get people
> to participate?  I would be interested in doing what I can.
>
> I would suggest that if we do this well, we can (as a spinnoff) create
> enough beginner-level material to make PostgreSQL the de-facto
> database for learning RDBMS concepts and that would help promote
> PostgreSQL beyond the benefits of certifications.
>
> My own suggestion is creating something in the following ways:
>
> 1)  Create an outline of what we feel is necessary to test and maybe
> what weight the subjects should have on the certification process.
> 2)  Let participating firms create exams based on #1.
> 3)  Create an official community and peer-reviewed curriculum teaching
> these topics.
> 4)  Create an official body to certify that the exams covered in step
> #2 meet community requirements.
>
> In my view the community cannot create certification exams of most
> levels (advanced certifications might be possible though) due to the
> issue of secrecy of the questions.  Instead, I would suggest
> "certifying the certifiers."  This allows nearly all of the
> documentation created by the group to be open for review.  It would
> also separate the certification from the standard which might allow
> for better certifications....
>
> The secret to success will be to have several dedicated people
> involved, and have a chair who has strong coordination skills (who can
> keep the group on-target).
>
>> It so happens that I'm fairly close to another community project,
>> several SRA America people are involved in, called the BSD
>> Certification Group, http://bsdcertification.org. They are
>> successfully developing a world-wide certification standards for all
>> the BSD variants.
>> Many of you BSD people know the BSD certification debates. Much of
>> what's been discussed here, are exactly the same issues discussed there.
>>
>> The point I want to make is  .... this group is suceeding .....
>> The secret to their success is the "process" and excellent
>> "documentation". There are ten people in the group. They coordinate
>> the debates and policy implementation. They issued an online survey
>> that got people to say what they thought was important in a BSD
>> standards. This is no small survey; it takes two hours to fill out
>> and they had the survey translated into a number of languages. In the
>> first two weeks they had recieved over 2,000 completed surveys.
>> They've recently issued their Task Analysis Survey
>> Report,http://bsdcertification.org/downloads/sr1_links.pdf, and it's
>> a whopping 144 pages long. And just yesterday they published their
>> Certification Roadmap,
>> http://bsdcertification.org/downloads/BSDCertificationRoadmap.pdf.
>>
>>
>>
> Will bsdcertification.org actually prepare their own certification
> exams?  Or will they have other companies do it?
>
>> The group finds itself getting support from all over the world. In
>> the past seven months the group's chair has been invited to speak at
>> conferences in North America, Europe, South America (even a group in
>> India wants to bring her over) about what they are doing.
>>
>> It is the BSD Certification Group's intention of documenting a how-to
>> of what it will take for an opensource community to create a
>> standards body similar to what they've done.
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>>
> Since you have been involved in the bsdcertification.org group, how
> would you see us going forward?
>
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
> Metatron Technology Consulting
>
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