One of my biggest complaints with the IT industry is the state of certifications. Microsoft has done a good job of making the exams harder, but they're still far too easy to cheat on. Everyone I come across has an MCDBA cert, so I don't even boast mine anymore. The problem is that none of these people know the slightest thing about SQL. I can't count the number of times that I've talked to an MCDBA who didn't kn One of my biggest complaints with the IT industry is the state of certifications. Microsoft has done a good job of making the exams harder, but they’re still far too easy to cheat on. Everyone I come across has an MCDBA cert, so I don’t even boast mine anymore. The problem is that none of these people know the slightest thing about SQL. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve talked to an MCDBA who didn’t know the simplest concepts about SQL… much less know how to actually do anything useful. And these are people who have been DBAs for over 10yrs. Seriously guys… What have you been doing for more than a decade???Microsoft isn’t the only one who has this problem though… Oracle and the others suffer from it as well. The only cert I know of that’s still worth its salt is the CCIE from Cisco. Their exam is not only expensive, but also consists of both a written and a practical. The exam itself takes something like 2-3 days, and there’s a 90% failure rate for first time takers. Why can’t we have something like that for MCDBA? After all, the MCDBA should be a master-level DBA cert that says you really know what you’re doing. I personally would love to see a cert that takes so much practice, and study that even I fail it 2-3 times. Then I and everyone I meet would know that when I have that cert, it’s actually worth something, and when I interview a candidate who has that cert, I don’t even need bother giving him a tech screen. Let’s get this cert out of the hands of every housewife with $20 to buy a CheatSheet exam, and back in the hands of the real DBAs who dedicate their lives to making all of your websites, payroll, inventory, distribution, warehouse, HR, and BI systems work smoothly every day. About me: Thanks for coming to my new BLOG. I am a Contributing Editor here at InfoWorld and I plan to cover all things databases. You can expect to find code snippets, industry buzz, best practices, and just general rants about annoying features, and of course, praises about exceptional features in all products that have to do with databases and SQL. Comments? Questions? Databases