This contest is over and I have selected the winners.
This afternoon I was contacted by a representative of Oracle University. She had five vouchers for the 1Z1-062 beta exam, Oracle Database 12c: Installation and Administration and wanted to know if I could come up with a way to get these to five of my readers. I told her that I have it covered.
Before I explain how you can get the vouchers, I want to talk a bit about the exam. 1Z1-062 is one of two exams in the Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certified Associate track. The other can be 1Z0-061: Oracle Database 12c: SQL Fundamentals or one of several other SQL exams. My previous blog post discussed all of the various SQL exams that meet the requirement and why they were created. Passing 1Z1-062 and a valid SQL exam will qualify you to be an Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certified Associate.
1Z1-062 is currently in beta and the vouchers are only valid while it is in beta. The beta period is currently scheduled to end on October 19, 2013. If you have not started preparing for the test and plan to take it, you had best study fast. A month of study time is a very low-end figure for an Oracle certification exam. This is especially true here as the 062 exam covers eighty-five topic areas. Putting that into perspective, the 11g Admin I exam, 1Z0-052, only had fifty areas. That is a seventy percent increase in the number of topics! If you have not started studying and are not willing to put in a lot of preparation for the exam, I would strongly suggest passing on this offer. For those of you that have been studying for it and will be scheduling the exam soon -- great! Read on and I will get to the 'free voucher' part... eventually.
If you have never taken an Oracle beta exam, you should know that they are long. The exam duration is 2 1/2 to 3 hours and there will be 150-220 questions. Production exams, by contrast, are normally about 70 questions and 1 to 2 hours in duration. An earlier post in this blog talks about Oracle beta exams -- Oracle Beta Exams -- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I highly recommend reading that post before committing to a beta exam. I took one Oracle beta and was not fully prepared for what it would be like. Having the proper expectations would have made the experience easier. That said, the biggest advantage betas have is that they cost less than the production exam. If you get one of these vouchers, the exam is completely free... bonus.
So... free vouchers (finally). Oracle University left it up to me to determine how to distribute them. I decided to make it a test of your research ability. If you have been to my Oracle Certification Prep website, it contains hundreds of links to articles, white papers, and videos on topics for various Oracle certification exams. If you want to have a chance at the vouchers, find an article, white paper, or video that is relevant to one or more of the topics on the 1Z1-062 exam. You can see an example of the type of link I am looking for in my page for 1Z0-052. Once you have found a good source for the exam, create a comment to this post linking to it. If you want to include more than one, feel free to include up to five sources.
That's it. Because the exam is scheduled to close in a month, I want to pick five winners fairly soon.
EDIT: With five valid responses, I will definitely choose the winners on October 5th.
Some rules:
1. No brain dumps. A comment with links to a brain dump or sites that sell them will simply be deleted without consideration even if it contains links to other valid sources.
2. I will be looking at the content in the linked articles. If you supply a comment full of articles unrelated to the exam, or advertisements, etc. -- the comment will be deleted.
3. Yes -- the Oracle documentation is a great source. No -- it will not count for this.
4. Do NOT put your email address in the comment. I do not believe in feeding spambots. I will announce the winners in a later post along with how to get in touch with me for the voucher numbers.
5. If two people supply a link to the exact same source, only the first will receive credit for it.
6. I will decide on the winners based solely on the quality of the content in the links. Telling me why you really really really need this voucher will not affect my decision-making process.
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