Oracle Certification announced the retirement of several exams on March 13, including 1Z0-007: Introduction to Oracle9i SQL. This is one of the more popular exams that Oracle offers because it satisfies the SQL requirement for several certification tracks. With its impending retirement, many people have been asking what this will mean to their certification path. In this article I will discuss what it means based on what stage of the certification process you are in.
- You have already passed 1Z0-007 — If this is the case, the retirement of the exam has no effect on you. Oracle does not invalidate the results of exams when they are retired. By retiring the exam, they are simply setting a date after which the exam will no longer be offered to new test takers. The exam 1Z0-001: Intro to SQL and PL/SQL was retired several years ago. However, people who passed that exam can still use it to satisfy their SQL requirement in certification tracks.
- You are currently studying for 1Z0-007 — If you have been preparing for this exam and are intending to take it, then you have until July 31 to do so. After that date, the exam can no longer be scheduled. I would not wait until the last few days. If anything ends up preventing you from taking the exam when you plan to, you cannot take the test after that date. This is true even if the problem is something that is not your fault, like an outage at the testing center. If you are unable to take 1Z0-007 before the deadline, you will have to switch to 1Z0-051.
- You were planning to study for 1Z0-007 — If you have not started the study process yet, I would recommend that you pursue the newer exam, 1Z0-051: Oracle Database 11g: SQL Fundamentals I. This exam has about an 80% commonality with 1Z0-007.
When comparing the exams, the two have thirty-four topics that are either comparable or identical. Eight of the topics in 1Z0-007 do not exist in 1Z0-051. Three of those are on iSQL*Plus, which is no longer shipped with the current release of Oracle. Four of the other five not in the 1Z0-051 exam are for minor subjects that were consolidated into more comprehensive subject areas in the 11G test. Finally, one topic was pulled out of fundamentals exam and placed in the SQL Expert test.
The 1Z0-051 exam has six topics that are not in 1Z0-007. Of those, three involve using the SET operators (INTERSECT, UNION, MINUS). One topic covers the use of conditional operators (DECODE and CASE) and another is about Cartesian products. The final topic covers the Oracle table structure. Each of the new subject areas in the 1Z0-051 exam are valuable additions, making it a better test than the one it is replacing.