Any Ascential Certification ??

raju_chvr · Post by **raju_chvr** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:17 am

I am sorry Guys. I know this is really not a technical question and I did search before posting this topic.

Can any one tell me whether their are any certifications for DataStage or any other Ascential Products either from Ascential or from other companies ?

Thanks for ur time

kduke · Post by **kduke** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:27 am

The only people I know that are certified are employees. How they got certified is a mystery. I think they claim it if they have been to class. Not sure there are any tests or formal program or process. If there is then I hope someone lets us know.

There are people on this site which would like some process which separates the experienced from the newbies but I doubt if anyone can write a test to do that. Look at all the Oracle certified people which are totally not qualified to be a DBA. I think most corporations understand there is a difference between head knowledge and people which can get the job done well. The best have both knowledge and experience like Ray, Ken, Hester and many others. I think it shows in their answers. Wisdom is usually practical and backed up by experience. Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge. How do you test for wisdom?

kcbland · Post by **kcbland** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:30 am

How do you test for wisdom? I read somewhere, probably on Ascential's site, that certification is being offered by Ascential. If I remember correctly, you have to petition Ascential for recognition and have certain qualifications, namely successfully deployed an Ascential based solution as well as completing the courses offered.

raju_chvr · Post by **raju_chvr** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:53 am

That means we have take their classes. But people who have enough experience and did successfully deploy some projects before with no formal training from Ascential. I learned it by moving from one group to another one which is doing DW and that was first project and transition in DW and DS.

Well let me try contacting them(Ascential) to find out if that qualifies or not?

and frankly speaking: There is no means of testing the levels of Wisdom.

Thanks

kduke · Post by **kduke** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:13 pm

That is my point. It is wisdom that everyone is looking for combined with knowledge. It is not possible to build a test to measure what is really important.

No way am I taking the classes just to get certified. I am sure that is what they want. We need some kind of alternative on this site. I hope we come up with something that works and measures more than what is in the tool or syntax.

datastage · Post by **datastage** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 7:56 pm

Kim is right about the wisdom and experience part. But a certification would still be nice because its at least one step to identifying who knows their stuff on who is stretching the truth about their knowledge and experience. But you would still get intellectual types that could pass certification by reading the product manuals and minimal experience what would make good ETL developers or users of ASCL's other products.

I wish some 3rd party organization would create a DataStage certification, someting simple that wouldn't be too costly. I have too heard that you can claim certification from ASCL by taking their courses, but I've seen their course material and its similar to Kim's Oracle DBA analogy: I've seen plenty that have gone through DataStage training that are completely clueless as to how to use the product. Its also not worth the money for independants to pay ASCL's high dollar rates to claim to be certified.

It's a funny thought, and I wouldn't really want to be the one to organize it, but I've always thought it would be fun to have like a DataStage Olympics. Basically give everyone a few DataStage problems to work out. One could be a performance contest. Give everyone the metadata for a few tables but with GB's of data. Tell them what hardware the server is, give them some decent business requirements document and an integration scenario. Everyone builds their best tuned jobs with PX or whatever and sends them in....of course a time limit to develop. Then someone runs the jobs in a controlled environment as best as possible and whoever gets the best throughput wins!.... More of a fun thought than something that could become a reality, but I know Kim Duke would dig a DataStage Olympics.

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:14 pm

That's an interesting thought!

I seem to recall a Ray post around here somewhere where he was involved in something like this Back In The Day. I recall he admitted to being disqualified even though his elapsed time was the lowest... something about resetting the system clock part way through his job?

Can you say - Kobayashi Maru?

Sreenivasulu · Post by **Sreenivasulu** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:46 pm

Certification is always a good idea. It helps in creating more awareness about Datastage. I have no idea if any ETL tools conducting certification exams. But i know of Reporting tools like Cognos having certification exams.

Regards

rsrikant · Post by **rsrikant** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:07 pm

Code: Select all

There are people on this site which would like some process which separates the experienced from the newbies but I doubt if anyone can write a test to do that. Look at all the Oracle certified people which are totally not qualified to be a DBA. I think most corporations understand there is a difference between head knowledge and people which can get the job done well. The best have both knowledge and experience like Ray, Ken, Hester and many others. I think it shows in their answers. Wisdom is usually practical and backed up by experience. Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge. How do you test for wisdom?

Frankly speaking most of these certifications can't judge the real worth of an individual. As you said, we can easily get certified in Oracle by getting the dump of old papers or by just mugging up the theory concepts for a month or so. How much practical experience that person has - only God knows.

I believe there is no need to separate newbies from the experienced one's. Everyone is a starter at one point of time. We grow by engaging ourself and hearing from the experienced and intellectuals. There can be real good troubleshooting skills in a newbie. But to separate them just because he/she don't enough experience, is not ok in my view.

In some of the posts i read people suggesting to attend the training by Ascential. But frankly speaking even some of the training sessions conducted are pathetic. That too after charging so much for the training. I am sorry if that hurts anyone. But that's the truth.

Going through the messages/replies from Ray, Ken, Craig, Kim, Hester, Vincent and many others - we are learning more. Please don't try to prevent newbies from getting these valuable advices.

Also, we have to observe one more thing. Data warehousing has picked up a lot in the last few years and the organisations need more and more people who can do the job for them in the ETL tools like Datastage & informatica etc.. There are not enough people available to fill in all the requirements from these organisations. And it sometimes so happens that the organisations even go for newbies to get the job done. So, it's not a fault of that newbie to ask something silly in this forum and also it's not his/her fault to take up this position with minimum knowledge. It's high time we seriously think of how to come over these situations.

Any way thanks for your patience in reading this post.

Srikanth

vmcburney · Post by **vmcburney** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:10 pm

Ascential recently rebranded training services as the Ascential University.

The foundation of the Ascential University is in our blended learning approach to training. Blended learning is built on the principle that learners learn best when presented with a variety of learning techniques.

I for one am looking forward to Ascential frat parties and seeing the cheer leading squad in action. I also have admiration for whoever managed to use the word learn four times in one short sentence. You would think that with elearning, eclassroom and etutoring the "University" could also come up with a certification exam.

I think it unlikely that a 3rd party would create an exam, especially since no one has thought it worthwhile to go to the effort of creating a reference book, there just doesn't seem to be enough DataStage users to justify the cost.

There used to be a description of certification on an old Ascential web site where spending several weeks on a DataStage project alongside an Ascential consultant gave you certification.

I think test based certification is merely a way of telling the difference between someone who slept through the training courses and someone who remembers what they learnt. It is no substitute for someone with a couple years experience but it is a good way for a novice to try and get some recognition for their attempts to learn the product.

kduke · Post by **kduke** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 6:19 am

I want to make something clear. I do not want to keep newbies from working. I too was a newbie and am basically self-taught. Companies are trying to hire ETL Leads and cannot tell from a resume who can do the job. That is mostly their fault but ask Ken if he wants to fix the DW that is built because of hiring the wrong talent to lead. Leadership has always been hard to define.

What makes a good data warehouse? What defines a good DataStage solution. I think at some point we will all have to pass an ETL Audit by the likes of Price Waterhouse or whatever accounting firm is still left. They will have a checklist like do you use Version Control, do you have good design documents like source to target documents and so on.

An audit is a certification for the DW built by your staff. We used to have them all the time back when I was a real employee. I liked them. They separated the organized and talented from the newbies or those less willing to do the hard tasks. A lot of experience can come from reading good books without knowledge you can only advance to a certain level of quality or completeness. Only a fool thinks he has all the answers. Books and this forum expose newbies and us that are always learning to new ideas. It is hard work to always try to learn something new and valuable.

kcbland · Post by **kcbland** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:27 am

Let's cut to the chase:

If Ascential actively "certified" people outside their organization, that would be an admission that there are qualified people other than those within their organization. Now, if your responsibility is to keep your resources billing at the highest value possible, would you like your company certifying external resources as equals who most likely will charge less to compete? I imagine lip service has been paid to certification, much less a University degree. Kind of like vaporware, you talk about it, but don't produce it.

Ascential IMO is trying to hoard projects and from my point of view is not doing to well, as I have more work offered to me than I can handle. I'm on 3 projects simultaneously right now, shooting around the country each week. This forum serves to establish a reputation for experienced alternatives to Ascential resources. My project contacts are running about 80% DSXchange referrals, meaning I was contacted because of my activity on this forum. I am able to cherry-pick the projects I want to work on.

Bottom line, if someone wants certification but lives in a vacuum, they still won't be trusted because they are unknown. By posting on this forum and interacting with peers, you develop a reputation that will open doors. While Ascential may not certify you, this forum serves a similar purpose as it shows your skills, thoughts, perspectives, and if you post some code, your abilities with the product. You may not get a fancy piece of paper on a plaque (I don't know where mine is, I filed it somewhere within the blackhole of my home office) but you do gain the esteem of your peers. That's what counts.

KeithM · Post by **KeithM** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 9:08 am

I recently attended a user group meeting offered by Ascential and this topic came up. Ascential currently does not offer any certification for there products but they are planning to in the near future. There is suppose to be three levels. The first is certification in a single product like datastage. The second level is certification in working with two Ascential products together. The third level is knowledge of all Ascential products.

This was just a brief overview so they did not have a whole lot of specifics. The big announcement with all of the details is being planned for Ascentail World in October.

mhester · Post by **mhester** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 9:29 am

I don't see that it is that hard to create a "recognized" certification program. MicroStrategy, Teradata and others have a very intense program that not only their own employees attend, but is offered to anyone willing to take the courses.

I know of a couple of people who did not pass the MicroStrategy courses and did not receive their certification and this had a direct impact on their ability to get contracts so I believe if done properly certification programs can be beneficial.

Regards,

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:25 pm

KeithM wrote:I recently attended a user group meeting offered by Ascential and this topic came up. Ascential currently does not offer any certification for there products but they are planning to in the near future. There is suppose to be three levels. The first is certification in a single product like datastage. The second level is certification in working with two Ascential products together. The third level is knowledge of all Ascential products.

This was just a brief overview so they did not have a whole lot of specifics. The big announcement with all of the details is being planned for Ascentail World in October.

I do hope it will be culturally fair! Given that, for example, there is a fully localized version of Ascential products in Japan, presumably certification will be available to be done - with statistically balanced difficulty levels - in Japanese. That was just an example - there are many users whose first language is something other than US English. This forum is proof positive of that.

Will there be a certification measure available for those who seem only to be able to communicate in SMS message text abbreviations?