Certification Preparation. Copyright 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.

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2 What Will I Learn? In this lesson, you will learn to: Review key terminology to prepare for the Certification exam. Demonstrate your understanding of PL/SQL code by answering questions about the PL/SQL code. Demonstrate your understanding of PL/SQL code by identifying errors within the PL/SQL code.

3 Why Learn It? Completing this course was the first step towards becoming an OCA Oracle Certified Associate. Oracle Certification is one of the best ways of demonstrating your knowledge and skills in Oracle Database Systems. To prepare you for the Certification Exam this lesson contains pointers to activities to prepare yourself for the exam. 3

4 Tell Me/Show Me Certification Exam The exam itself has approximately 65 questions which you must complete in 0 minutes. Answer all of the questions you understand first, so you do not run out of time. You must get 77% correct to pass which equates to approximately 50 questions correct. Consider these points when taking the exam: Read the questions very carefully, and then study the answers before you make your choice. Many of the questions have answers that look fairly identical. Make sure you understand clearly what the question is about; do not just jump to conclusions. Answer all questions. There is no negative scoring, so a guess will always be better than not even trying to answer a question. Use a process of elimination to eliminate the obvious incorrect answers first as this will greatly improve your chances of guessing the correct answer from the remaining choices. Mark questions for review when you are unsure and move on to the next one. When you have finished the test you can then revisit all of the questions you marked before you score your test. 4

5 Tell Me/Show Me Preparation The more you study and prepare yourself, the easier you will find the Certification exam. At the very least you should make sure you: are familiar with all of the overall concepts of the Language know the difference between similar components (local and global variables or procedures, functions and packages) and so on and so forth. In this document, we will give you a list are familiar with key phrases, concepts and keywords. Tasks you should have completed at this point include: Completed all of the Quizzes at least once--it would be a good idea to run through them all again as part of your certification exam preparations. Completed all of the PL/SQL exams for both semesters of the PL/SQL course. Completed all of the PL/SQL practices for both semesters of the PL/SQL course. Created several pieces of PL/SQL code. 5

6 Tell Me/Show Me Certification Resources Oracle has additional resources available to help you prepare for the exam. To find the latest information, go to the Oracle Education webpage ( and select the Certification Link from the left hand menu. From either of these links you can read the latest news about the exams, you can find a test center, and you can even download test questions which will help you prepare for the Certification Exam. These Test Questions are very similiar to the real exam questions. You can download the test questions and work through them, not only to test your knowledge, but also to get used to the format of the exam. Doing so will help you to get familiar with the slightly different look and feel of the exam question screens, as these are slightly different than the ones you are used to from the Oracle Academy exams. 6

7 Tell Me/Show Me Review Checklist The next slide contains a list of words, concepts and phrases that you should be very familiar with as part of your preparation for the Certification Exam. None of these topics should be confusing or unknown when you take the exam. Once you feel comfortable with all of them, proceed to the next section where you will review PL/SQL code samples. 7

8 Words, Phrases, and Concepts Cursors Triggers Distinct Joins Topic Exceptions Procedures Functions Insert, Update, Delete Dependencies SQL Functions Lexical unit Scalar, Composite and LOB datatypes Variable assignment Reference Topic Commit, Savepoint and Rollback Conditional Control CURSOR for Update Iterative Control RAISE_APPLICATION_ ERROR Nested Blocks PRAGMA_EXCEPTION_ INIT Formal Parameters Object Privileges Actual Parameters Invokers and Definers Rights Oracle Supplied Packages Native Dynamic SQL Reference Topic Packages Persistent state of Package Variables INSTEAD OF Trigger OLD and NEW in Triggers Data Dictionary information re Triggers UTL_FILE Migrate LONG to LOG BFILES PL/SQL Records INDEX BY Table Dependencies UTLDTREE Automatic recompilation Reference

9 Tell Me/Show Me Coding Examples In the Course Outline you will find a link to a document titled Certification Preparation PL/SQL Code Samples and Questions. This document contains two pieces of PL/SQL code with a number of questions after each piece of code. Make sure you can read and understand the code and can answer each of the questions; ideally each question should not take you more than a maximum of minutes to answer. Time yourself to better understand how quickly you can answer PL/SQL code related questions.

10 Summary In this lesson, you learned to: Review key terminology to prepare for the Certification exam. Demonstrate your understanding of PL/SQL code by answering questions about the PL/SQL code. Demonstrate your understanding of PL/SQL code by identifying errors within the PL/SQL code. We wish you success with the Certification Exam! 10