Today Oracle University announces the release of new Oracle Database 12c Administrator certifications. The new Oracle Database 12c certifications emphasize the foundational and advanced skills needed by Database Administrators and will prepare DBAs to leverage powerful new management and consolidation capabilities, resulting in an even more valuable credential for customers and partners.

The Oracle Certified Associate (OCA) for Oracle Database 12c objectives measure IT professionals' mastery of day-to-day administration skills and their ability to manage the challenges they're likely to encounter on the job. This credential focuses on SQL skills, operational administration of the Oracle Database including performance and space management, and installing, patching and upgrading the Oracle Database.

Earning the OCA credential requires successful completion of two exams: 1Z0-061 - Oracle Database 12c: SQL Fundamentals and 1Z0-062 - Oracle Database 12c: Installation and Administration. The OCA certification track also allows for several alternate exams which can be substituted for 1Z0-061.

ORACLE CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL (OCP)

Building on the competencies in the Oracle Database 12c OCA certification, the Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) for Oracle Database 12c certification includes advanced knowledge and skills required of top-performing database administrators. The OCP credential focuses on developing and implementing backup and recovery strategies, designing consolidation strategies to exploit multitenant container and pluggable databases, and thorough understanding how CDB/PDBs fit into the DBaaS cloud-computing model.

Today, Oracle is releasing 1Z0-060 - Upgrade to Oracle Database 12c, which allows Oracle Certified Professionals with credentials in Oracle 9i, Oracle Database 10g or Oracle Database 11g to upgrade to Oracle Database 12c with a single exam. The upgrade exam focuses on designing consolidation strategies to exploit multitenant container and pluggable databases, implementing Oracle 12c feature-rich ILM support, optimizing SQL execution using dynamic swapping of sub plans, implementing real-time data redaction within databases, as well as exploiting many additional performance, backup and recovery, security and partitioning enhancements. The exam also includes a thorough review of core DBA skills.

Visit the OCP certification track for more details on the new upgrade exam as well as alternate certification paths.

The Oracle Certified Master (OCM) for Oracle Database 12c - a very challenging and elite top-level certification - certifies the most highly skilled and experienced database experts. Further information on the 12c OCM level will be announced as exam development concludes.

To date, there have been more than 1.6 million Oracle certifications granted worldwide. Explore these certification tracks, exam requirements and objectives, and start toward earning your exciting new Oracle Database 12c certification credentials from Oracle.