Re: PostgreSQL certifications? - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On Sat, 5 Jun 2004, Christopher Browne wrote:

> In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, erempel@uvic.ca (Evan Rempel) transmitted:
> > I disagree with the supply demand argument.
> >
> > I just went through a 100+ hour evaluation of 4 database products for
> > selection in an enterprise environment. Approx 200 databases for a total
> > of 11+GB of data with 4,500 users accross 110 departments. A substantial
> > undertaking.
> >
> > One of the criteria was "Can our DBA team get formal
> > training/certification to support the selected product in our
> > environment?"
> >
> > Without this, the organization is reluctant to even consider rolling
> > PostgreSQL our in a production environment, regardless of who thinks
> > it's good, how much it costs or any other technical reason. The IT
> > staff never gets an oportunity to showcase PostgreSQL because it is
> > never put into production. If it's never in production, there is
> > never a job oportunity, and without the job oportunity, the
> > PostgreSQL community never create training/certification. This is an
> > endless circle.
>
> Does your organization require a "certification program" for every
> piece of software they install?

Not all pieces. Which ones? The ones that hold our data. It's not really
certification either, but approved training (are they the same?).
The databases, the backup system, the storage area network.
Components that merely transfer the data, such as samba and apache
are not products that require certification.

>
> -> Are you required to be a ViCP?  (Vi-Certified Programmer)
>
> -> How about GCC certification?
>
> -> Remarkably enough, despite the absence of a certification
>    program, Apache has proven very popular, indeed, more popular
>    than IIS, which also lacks a certification program.
>
> -> Are any of your people BASH-certified?  How about their Ksh
>    certification?  (I am quite sure that nobody is
>    COMMAND.COM-certified.)
>
> In the absence of these certifications, it would be just stupid for
> organizations to adopt any of these tools, as it would demonstrably
> impossible for them to be supportable in said absence.
>
> I'm being a little sarcastic here, but it sure seems odd that those
> pieces of software have grown so popular despite the complete absence
> of relevant certifications if certifications were truly so important.
>
> Reality is that putting together certification programs is a sizable,
> bureaucratically-challenging sort of task that _isn't_ something that
> Tom Lane or Bruce Momjian should drop development work to work on.

Agreed. I'm not really interested in certification so much as I am in
training that lives up to an approved level. The next step is "approved by
whom?" In light of OSS, approved by the development team would be
sufficient.

>
> Whatever the would-be demand, it has not been of a nature that has
> drawn anyone out of the woodwork to do it.  I think the PostgreSQL Inc
> guys out in Nova Scotia had _something_ happening a year or so ago,
> but it evidently wasn't something that could turn into obvious
> advocacy efforts.
>
> The fact that you think you need it does not magically result in other
> people concluding that it becomes their responsibility to provide it;
> that's the way open source communities work...

Once again I agree. I'm just in a position that after 4 years of
demonstrating that psql works, is stable, scalable and maintainable, I
still can't get any interest from management. They was some form of
guarantee that the DBA's can work with postgresql PRIOR to installing it.
They want to send the DBA for training, but with no experience with the
product, and no real guidance from www.postgresql.org as to where
"Official" training can be obtained, they won't send the DBA's, thus they
never get thier assurances, and they never really get interested in
postgresql.

Perhaps it's my approach that is the fundamental problem in all of this  :-(

Evan Rempel <erempel@UVic.CA>
Senior Programmer Analyst
University of Victoria