Mysql Certification for developers - first try - first failure

For anyone looking for feedback on Mysql 5.6 Certification exam.

As a general impression if you work you queries on a weekly basis you should be safe just by practicing some more of that preparing for it.

I must say to begin with I was overwhelmed when reading the table of contents for the Certification Exam by the amount of chapters I thought I have not covered well. Big mistake, most of the questions where from a developer’s daily activity like interpreting results. query explanation and query design.

I was surprised by the approach of the exam as I value it more now, but in the same time I spent too much preparing for the theory part, which is only for 10% of questions at most. The exam does cover the new features from 5.6 version and optimizations, but still you need to work your queries rather than read info you might have not got through in your daily activity as a programmer.

Here are the chapters on which I sucked when taking the exam:

1. Info on btrees and hash tables:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7306316/btree-vs-hashtable
• https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/index-btree-hash.html

2. why would anyone use straight join and when ?

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5818837/why-does-straight-join-so-drastically-improve-this-query-and-what-does-it-mean

I covered the motivation for taking a Mysql Certification exam some time ago here.