The Top 5 Database Certifications

Savvy, talented and knowledgeable database professionals always in demand.

I’ve been working with and around database management systems since I was still in graduate school, when it way my privilege and pleasure to work on a very early object-oriented database prototype, and on an aerospace design database for NASA. Over the past three decades, I’ve seen a lot of database platforms come and go, but there’s never been any question that database technology is a crucial component for all kinds of applications and computing tasks.

Thus, although database knowledge may not be as sexy or bleeding edge as some other areas (such as Cloud Computing, storage networking, or mobile apps as I write this story), there has been, is, and always will be a need for savvy, talented and knowledgeable database professionals at all levels and in a number of related job roles.

In fact, though we can talk about database jobs and related certificationsin a general way, it’s more useful to understand how such things cluster around various specific database-related job roles. In part, this reflects the maturity of database technology, and its integration into most aspects of commercial, scientific, and academic computing.

As you read about the various certification programs I’m about to mention, you’ll want to keep these various job roles (and the credentials that go with them) clearly in mind. The most common such roles in the database world include:

• Database administrator (DBA): Someone who is responsible for installing, configuring, and maintaining a database management system (DBMS). Often tied to a specific platform such as Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, DB2, SQL Server, and so forth.
• Database developer: Someone who works with generic and proprietary APIs to build applications that interact with DBMS’s (also platform specific as with DBA roles).
• Data Analyst/Designer (aka Database Architect): Someone who researches data requirements for specific applications or users, and designs database structures and application capabilities to match.
• Data mining/Business Intelligence (BI) specialist: Someone who specializes in dissecting, analyzing, and reporting on important data streams, such as customer data, supply chain data, transaction data and histories, and so forth.
• Data warehousing specialist: Someone who specializes in assembling and analyzing data from multiple operational systems (orders, transactions, supply chain information, customer data, and so forth) to establish data history, analyze trends, generate reports and forecasts, and support general ad hoc queries.

Careful attention to the foregoing database job roles provides two important items of information. First, a good general background in relational database management systems, including an understanding of the Structured Query Language (SQL) is a basic pre-requisite for all database professionals. Second, although various efforts to standardize database technology exist, much of the whiz-bang capability that databases and database applications can deliver come from proprietary, vendor-specific technologies. Most serious, heavy-duty database skills and knowledge are tied to specific platforms, including various Oracle products (including the Open Source MySQL environment), Microsoft’s SQL Server, SAP’s Sybase, IBM’s DB2 and other platforms, and more. That’s why most of the Top 5 items you’re about to encounter relate directly to those very same platforms.

Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis on information security, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems.