Hello,

I am studying for my OCP DBA 8i exam 1 and I want to practice what I am learning, but I do not have Oracle on my home computer. I am downloading 8i now, but I want to know if anyone knows of anywhere online where I can gain access to an Oracle database that has data I can practice on.
I am getting my OCP DBA 8i while I'm in school working on my MIS, meaning I don't have the tools someone working in the field might have to practice. If anyone knows of anything online that is designed for practicing please let me know.

thanks, dan

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Hi Dan,

sorry, I don't know any public test&play - databases. I guess such a service would be very "difficult" to maintain ;-)

you can use the oracle demo tables for your first steps: install the oracle database by following the installation instructions step by step. search in your ORA_HOME/rdmbs/admin dir for scipts like scott.sql or utlsampl.sql - run them in sql*plus. these scripts create the "famous" emp / dept tables any oracle trainee knows by heart

create your own tables and populate them with your inventory, your IT books/materials, videos or whatever is worth being stored ... ;-)

try to download statistical information/tables from official sources (population, economy figures and so on) and load them into your tables (ok - this is more an advanced topic - but I'll help you if you want)

the best data to learn sql is your own data where you know and "understand" the contents. then you can concentrate on sql and expected results.

Good luck!

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laLocA

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laloca, thanks for responding to my post.

I am working on finishing the installation of Oracle on my machine and I should be able to start practicing pretty soon.

I'm hoping to take the first exam on wednesday of this week. Do you have any last minute tips or warnings I should know about?

Thanks for the support, it helps to know that there are people that you ask questions and that there response is going to be appropriate and relevent.

take care, talk soon, dan

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Hi Dan,

what I can remember from my exam last summer it was mostly code checking - which line is wrong, what will be the result.

They want you to know the exact syntax of some DML and DDL statements - they give you 4 slightly different versions of the same statement and you need to know which one is correct.

some pl/sql blocks to check - esp. exception handling and validity of variables (variable scopes).

As I heard recently there is in the acutal test also a question about DMBS.PUT_LINE

Good luck!

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laLocA

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