Ooo how nervous can one person be in any single moment???

Very nervous indeed I must admit, especially when the first 5 questions were very long complex questions on exceptions and PL/sql blocks. After I had navigated those and calmed down a bit I managed to get through the rest without feeling too stupid and passed with a fairly modest score of 75%. I thout the pass mark for this was 72 but it seems to have only been 67 or round about on my test.

Onwards and upwards I guess.

For anyone elses reference who might be taking this the exam in the near future. I have beem self studying for about 3 weeks using the Sybex DBA kit (3 books) which was quite good for explaining the whole concept and commands ect. The tests in the Sybex books seem quite good for testing your general understanding of PL/SQL but are not nearly the same format as the exams.

I also used some computer based training which was helpfull to shed some more light on some of the issues that Sybex didn't explain too well. I guess just a different point of view can explain things in a different way sometimes.

I have also been using Self Test Software that expired in September and these seemed to be similar too some of the questions that were in the exam and simulated the test well.
HOWEVER, the exam I sat was MUCH harder than the STS's I have and had alot more questions involving long sequences of code and scenarios.

From my experience of today I'd recommend making sure you are totaly comfortable with basic SQL commands so you can make sure you get all those questions right. Concentrate quite heavily on PL/SQL blocks and cursors and I also had a few tricky multi-column sub query questions that were worded in a confusing way.

I hope that helps anybody that might be taking this exam in the near future.

As for me, one down, four to go.

I somehow get the feeling they will only be getting harder from now on though

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Congratulations on your pass!!

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One Exam leads to another! Where will it ever end?

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