• March 26: StorageTek Tape Libraries Essentials (1Z1-546)
• March 26: Sun Storage 6000 Arrays Essentials (1Z1-563)
• April 2: Oracle Insurance Policy Administration Configuration Essentials (1Z1-557)
• April 9: Sun Flash Storage Essentials (1Z1-552)
• April 9: Oracle iStore 12 Essentials (1Z1-555)
• April 9: Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Quality Management 11g Essentials (1Z1-529)
• April 16: Oracle Live Sciences Data Hub 2 Essentials (1Z1-556)
• April 16: Siebel CRM 8 Business Analyst (1Z1-219)
• May 14: Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g Release 2 and Grid Infrastructure Administration (1Z1-058)

All Oracle exams are available through VUE testing centers and run three to three-and-a-half hours long. More information, including the objectives for each exam, can be found here.

Certification Exam Tip #3
The moment you look at a test question, you need to think of where the question came from. How did this set of words come to appear on your screen and what is the purpose for using these particular words? Being able to put these questions in the proper perspective can help you find the right answer and move on.

I'm not talking about the technology the test is focused on or the courses that are loosely related to the exam. I'm specifically talking about how that question came to be a question in the exam pool and the history behind it. Being able to answer this requires doing a small amount of research beforehand, but is a step that no one should overlook.

Where vendors get their questions differs greatly and the professionalism of those questions is equally varied. Allow me to illustrate the two ends of the spectrum with examples:

1. Several years ago, I was offered the opportunity to write test questions for a large software company well known in certification circles. The company was trying to put out several exams at one time and thus needed to bring in some outside help. The offer was $150 per question, and when you think of how many multiple-choice questions you can come up with in a day, you'll have an idea of how many seconds it took before I jumped at the chance.
   
   I made a number of trips to the company's headquarters to meet with its psychometricians to discuss exactly what it was looking for and how it approached testing. I spent weeks writing and submitting questions which they then tore apart. Every word of every question was scrutinized closely: Did it translate well in different languages? Did it have multiple meanings? How well did it test with the alpha group (long before going to beta)? And so on. In the end, the company used very few of my questions, but those they used were ideal for reliability, validity, standardization and generalizability.
   
   
2. On another occasion, I participated in writing questions for another vendor that is now no longer a force in the business. The questions for the exam were written during a "retreat" during which volunteers were given a quick overview of the various parts of a question. The volunteers then wrote as many questions as they could over a few days. Those questions went straight to beta testing and were then posted.
   
   In the end, the questions contained some grammatical errors, and there was a fair amount of disparity between questions based on their respective authors' skillsets. A company specializing in psychometrics supposedly looked at the questions before they went live, but they focused on how each question scored and did nothing to fix wording, scrutinize phrasing, et cetera.

Why are these important scenarios for test takers to consider? Because in an exam developed under the first scenario, you need to scrutinize everything and think and rethink the questions. There won't be anything there that flags the answer for you or that's ambiguous. Your basic knowledge is not enough, as the focus is much higher on Bloom's Taxonomy, requiring you to evaluate and analyze. There will never be an answer here that disparages the vendor (every question is a feature of the technology -- what it can do versus what it cannot) or does not promote something the vendor thinks favorably of.

For the questions developed in the second scenario, however, you need to read the questions quickly, answer them and move on. These are knowledge-based questions (the lowest you can find in the taxonomy). The more you read them, the more you'll talk yourself out of the right answer by being distracted by wording, grammar and so on -- things that are not meant to throw you off but do because these questions haven't been worded as precisely. There may be questions about what technology cannot do in addition to what it can, and it is a test of memory more than anything else.

How do you know which set of questions you'll face before you take an exam? Find out how the question authors are recruited. Are they paid or volunteers? It won't take too extensive of an online search to ascertain this. What might be more difficult is determining if the vendor has its own psychometricians (you can look for jobs in this category on simplyhired.com and other sites). Being armed with the right kind of information can be valuable when you click Start.

Check out Certification Exam Tip #2 here and #1 here.

Microsoft, Prometric Sign Five-Year Contract
The days of Microsoft testing being available at more than one testing chain are long gone. Within the last few weeks, Microsoft has signed a contract to continue offering testing through Prometric testing centers worldwide for another five-year term. More details can be found here.