I realise that these have been discuuseed before, but a couple of things have happened that caused me to bring this up again, and to raise some questions.
A couple of nights ago, a seminar was presented in Perth, Western Australia, by an institution offering IT masters degrees. One of the masters degrees, was a Master of Systems Development (MSD). Their masters degrees incorporated industry certification. The MSD incorporated the Microsoft MCAD and MCSD, and related to .NET systems development. The institution is also investigating possibly offering a similar masters degree, relating specifically to, or emphasising, databases. After the presentation, I asked the presenter about the possibility of incorporating open source, rather than proprietary system development, with open source industry certification. Unfortunately, the only open source industry certification that was relevant, that I could cite, was the MySQL certification set, along with LPI and RHCE certification, with no apparent industry certification for PostgreSQL. The presenter said that the institution was considering Oracle as a possibility in the future, Oracle having industry certification. Thus, recognised, international, industry certification of open source application systems development, either involving PostgreSQL as a database backend by itself, or, involving PostgreSQL as a factor (eg, open source database applications development involving either PostgreSQL or MySQL as separate options, or, competency with both), could be useful, apart from having the internationally recognised industry certification in its own right, encouraging acceptance of open source software development in such qualifications as these masters degrees with their incorporated recognised international industry certification. In trying to find the organisation that I had understood to be the main one for providing PostgreSQL certification (I had understood that it was PostgreSQL.com, or something like that, or, possibly pgsql.com), and, being unable to find any details of any competency-based certification at these sites, I did a bit of searching, and I found a postgresql.org web page at http://www.postgresql.org/survey.php?View=1&SurveyID=22 , which gave the results of a survey, with the question "Should we create a standard worldwide PostgreSQL training course?", with 79.691% of the votes, being votes for the yes side - and of that percentage, 50.386 "strongly yes". The survey is not dated, so I do not know how long ago it was held. However, it appears to have indicated support for "a standard worldwide PostgreSQL training course". On the web page, whils other survey questions are listed, no further reference is made to the result of the survey, for example, "The PostgreSQL guru's are <investigating the possibility of> developing a standard worldwide PostgreSQL traing course, in response to the survey results". So, I ask, given the result of the poll, however old it is, is any action being taken, to develop "a standard worldwide PostgreSQL training course", or set of such courses (eg, core, DBA, developer, PHP|Perl/PostgreSQL web developer, etc)? I also found a web page at http://advocacy.postgresql.org/advantages/?lang=en , in which the text was included; "our training programs are generally regarded as being more cost-effective, manageable, and practical in the real world than that of the leading proprietary database vendors.". To what training programs, does this refer? Are they standardised, or, does this refer to separate, independent, autonomous, individual training programs that are not standardised? Also, in my searching, I did manage to find a certification at http://www.postgresql.at/certification.html , which also has a link to training provided by that company. From the web site, it appears that the training/certtification provided by that company, is of ten days duration, assumedly of 8 hours per day, thence 80 hours, the equivalent of about 6 hours per week over a 13 week period, plus two hours, thence, the equivalent of a single semester, university unit. That appeared to be the only detailed training/certification course that I could find in PostgreSQL. >From the web page at http://techdocs.postgresql.org/companies.php , that company appears to be a small company in Austria, and the company and certification appear to be recognised by PostgreSQL.org . Is that the only PostgreSQL certification that is recognised? Is it recognised internationally? Thank you in anticipation, for answers to all of these questions. -- Bret Busby Armadale West Australia .............. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." - Deep Thought, Chapter 28 of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy In Four Parts", written by Douglas Adams, published by Pan Books, 1992 .................................................... ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html
