After taking a well earned break from studying, I dusted off my copy of the MySQL Certification Guide and lost my head again for a good 4 days or so.

My goal this time was to achieve Certified MySQL 5.0 Developer through upgrading my Core certification – sounds easy right?.

That’s what I though. I totally underestimated this exam, thinking it was just an upgrade and that the questions would be straightforward, after all there are only 60 questions in this exam compared to the 70 per exam for DBA!.

Having spent less time this year writing code, the first thing I noticed about this exam was that I had to apply hands on knowledge to the questions, I had to think through how I would run certain queries and understand the expressions that were available, something I have not had to do recently. This led to frustration when testing my knowledge against the sample questions in the book, as I actually had to understand the theory behind the questions. Not easy when you spend more time as a DBA maintaining the server than using it!.

Studying for the exam gave me an understanding of features I had not yet implemented, features like Stored Routines, Triggers and Views. I now understand the benefits these features provide and will factor them into any future code I write. If like me you have not taken the time to get to grips with these additions, I suggest you spend a few minutes research. I now think of Stored Routines in terms of Library’s that can be shared between applications – a great way to simplify client side coding!.

So what makes this a certification worth having? Well there are very little resources available for this exam, no practice tests that I could see, no cheat sheets. You need to work with MySQL if you really want to pass this exam, and in doing so you learn a lot more than you would just reading material, that alone makes this a worthwhile cert!.

The MySQL Certification Guide is fantastic and covers all the topics required to pass the exam, the sample questions get you involved and you get to explore the world through SQL!. (you know what I mean)
If you are considering any of the MySQL Certifications you definitely need this book!.

So only one exam left (yes I passed), the CMCDBA (actually 2 if you count the CMA). I think I will wait until the MySQL 5.1 Cluster Certification Guide is released before I start down that path!…

After having a week to recover from the first exam I finally got around to taking the second one….and passed!!

Part II of the MySQL DBA Certification focused a lot more on the day to day running of the server, compared to Part I which was very much installation / configuration based.

Studying for the exam was a little difficult as I also had to work this week (as opposed to being on holiday!), but the skills you gain can be directly applied to everyday management of MySQL, and can be very rewarding especially if you focus on optimisation.

So what next you ask? Well after getting this far I thought it only fair that I give something back to the MySQL Community in the form of a MoinMoin Macro – mmMySQL.

mmMySQL provides a quick way to view MySQL Status and Config directly from your Wiki pages. If like me you manage several MySQL servers and want a quick way to view your server Status or Config, just drop this macro into your MoinMoin Macro folder and add it to a page….easy huh!.

As for where we go from here with mmMySQL……who knows?