Open VMS Exam

[simon_164]

Dear All,
I was wondering if I can get responses for questions i had in my first openvms exam.
I remember about 20-25 questions, i'm not interested in only responses. Any document, link, experience would be much appreciated. I am willing to learn more about these topics, because I thought I knew them. Can i post these questions?

[Mobeen_1]

Hello Simon,
Please go ahead and post the questions and i am sure all the good folks here will help you.

Also its good to review the OpenVMS random question generator

http://networkessentials.com/certified/vms/getq.cgi?ql=0#ritehere

rgds
Mobeen

[Jan van den Ende]

Simon,

I guess most of us will jump in, but probably not all of it at once.


I think that it will quickly grow into one big heap of confusion if you put it all in one stream, so it think it would be better if you open a separate stream per question.

Proost.

Have one on me.

Jan

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

simon,

Please don't post your recollections of questions from the OpenVMS exams. If you read the fine print on the agreement you signed when you took the exam, you'll find it's not permitted.

HP is very serious about protecting the integrity of all exams.

[simon_164]

if this is the case, then i have a problem getting answers to these questions. Do you advice any solution?

[John Gillings]

simon,

There's a philisophical issue here. Presumably you want to pass this exam so you can get your OpenVMS certification. But, if you've just been told the answers to the questions by someone else, are YOU deserving of the certification or is the person who gave you the answer?

Furthermore, if you publish the questions in the exam, along with their answers, then anyone can just memorise them and pass the same exam, without any experience in OpenVMS at all. That dilutes the credibility of yours and everyone elses efforts to sit and pass exams to demonstrate your skills. OpenVMS certification really means something, not just that you can cram the night before.

The exams aren't easy. They weren't meant to be. They're intended to test your experience with OpenVMS. One of the skills you will need is finding stuff in the documentation. So, I'd suggest you start by trying to find answers to any specific questions in the doc set.

By all means ask general questions on the subject in this forum as well, but please DO NOT post actual questions and/or answers from the exam. I can assure you any exam questions posted will be deleted by moderators. Repeat attempts might even elicit a response from the HP legal department, but I'm sure it won't come to that! ;-)

[simon_164]

Dear John,
I totally agree with you about the philosophical issue. However, here's another simple one: I'm posting the questions so I can learn them. Another simpler one, someone can present the exam the first time, write all the questions down, and represent it again with the good answers. The fault was from HP since we have made 2 trainings which cost us 8,000 $ and there wasnâ t an exam at the end.
My decision is to not post the questions. But how can I get help; would you think that an OpenVMS guru would care what is the real meaning of an argument, an attribute, a keyword or a qualifier. You just know these things for the exam and you forget them for your whole life.
Do you think it is good to spend a whole day searching for a simple parameter instead of spending time learning about it; and about the structure of OpenVMS?
I am totally against the idea that OpenVMS is the best exam to present, and that you wonâ t find any question or any dump. All exams are the same or you will fail them all the first time. Even the most knowledgeable person in OpenVMS would not know simple instructions because he can simply search them in the help.
However you will always need to present I.T. exams. Thus I will be brave to study hard and present it another time.
Now the questions is if you think that there is a problem if I ask general questions about things I donâ t know to get information or specific documents.

Thank you very much,
Regards

[Jan van den Ende]

Simon,

I guess I will now have to come over to the side of John.


All exams are the same or you will fail them all the first time. Even the most knowledgeable person in OpenVMS would not know simple instructions because he can simply search them in the help.


Let me answer this with my personal experience.
( I know, only a sample of one occurrence, but rather relevant to me).

I have come in touch with VMS is 1982, and in 1984 it became my main professional activity.

In the Digital days there were no exams that I know of, and in the Compaq days the idea only slowly grew for VMS, starting in the USA.
Initially, there were no exams in Europe.
Then, during Decus Europe, the US examination team was present at the event, and taking the exams was encouraged, and sponsored for paying symposium goers.

In Lyon (2002) I rserved an examination at a time (tuesday afternoon) that fitted my session pattern.

Monday night was the Dutch Event, which was a great success, with for me a minor drawback: they served no beer, only wine (well, in France, might have been expected).
My trouble is I stand wine sooo much less than beer...

Next morning, coming to the Conference Centre, my bus got stuck in the traffic, and I came late for the keynote session.
The doors were closed, and I was not allowed in. Coffe and other refreshments were also cleaned away.
I just took some paracetamol with tapwater, and sought something to spend the time before the next sessions.
Well, the examination room was open, and there were some free seats.
I just went in, and took the VMS Administration exam. No preparation, and a good hangover.
Just sailing on automatic I did a very decent score.

(well, I used the afternoon reservation for the Advanced exam, supposed to be more difficult, but without the hangover, and some more concentration, I DID score 11 points more, so I guess my state in the morning DID have a bad influence).

I see this whole experience as corraborating Johns point:
If you HAVE the desired experience, then the exam will "do itself".

--- nevertheless, if you have any questions on any points (may or may they not stem from an exam), you can always post here.

Just make sure it does not LOOK like an examination question, and DO NOT expect to get the _EXAM_ answer.
But the answers you get, SHOULD allow you to distill the exam answer.
And THEN the goal is reached: if you can translate the answers given here to the correct choice of the exam's answer, you have learned to WORK with the info, which means, do DESERVE to pass!

Proost.

Have one on me.

Jan

[Ian Miller.]

I would not like to see the VMS exams go the way of the MCSE exams where there are lots of web sites with Q&A. People pass by rote learning. The acronym MCSE is said to mean many things including Must Consult Someone Experienced :-)

The unfourtates that do windows support that I know tell me that just becase someone has MCSE does not mean that they can actually do real work.

[Kris Clippeleyr]

Hi,

I'm completely with Jan on this subject. If you know your stuff, an exam shouldn't be a problem.
I took the OpenVMS Administrators exam (what a name! We're "system managers"!) at the DECUS conference in Lisbon (forgot the year). No preparation, just took an empty chair and did it in record time (20 min.). Passed with flying colors. (Sorry, now I am boasting.)
But, Simon, by all means, if you have a problem, post a question, and we'll be happy to help you out.

Kris (aka Qkcl)

[Michael LaRoche]

I agree with Jan also. I know people who take certifications just to put on their resume but when it comes to really knowing what to do they haven't a clue. Experience is the best teacher.

I know this theme has been repeated now but with several years of different OS's, I learned more by doing and then taking classes to go for certification. Granted you won't run into everything thats on a certification test but that's where the class and book work come in.

Good luck on taking the exam and maybe one of these day's I'll do it also.

Mike

[simon_164]

Thank you all!!
Can you with information about the working set?
what's the difference between a system working set and a process working set? isn't the system working set the working set for the process "system" ?
regards,

[Ian Miller.]

simon, the system working set is the set of pages used for the pageable parts of VMS. See performance manual etc
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/6491/6491pro.html
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/732FINAL/aa-pv5mh-tk/aa-pv5mh-tk.HTMl
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/732FINAL/aa-pv5nh-tk/aa-pv5nh-tk.HTMl

[Rob Young_4]

I visited the random qustion generator.
You've got to be kidding.

"What type SYSGEN parameter is ACP_SWPFILES?"

Give me a break. That and several others
tells me it is tilted heavily to arcania / trivia. What is the test for,
a good ole boys club?

Wait, here is another chuckler:

Which of the following qualifiers are NOT valid for $SYSMAN ALF /ADD ?

Maybe if I click long enough I find:

What is your favorite color?

Rob

[simon_164]

totally agree with you RoB.
the question generator is totally unuseful.

[James C. Nix]

I checked it out the on-line sample test and tend to agree that the test questions are minutiae, best saved for a Friday night trivia contest.

Reference manuals are written for the purpose of NOT having to memorize minutiae by rote.

It is more important to remember: 1) where the reference manuals are; 2) which one(s) apply to a particular issue; 3) how to read.

The last skill, oddly enough, is one which seems to be in short supply. Primarily because people are lazy. So lazy they don't even want to type $Help and read anymore, much less find the manual.

Case in point:

On one job the programmer/analysts complained they the "documentation sets" on COBOL, DECForms and FMS were hopelessly outdated and they could not find out how to use the new features. The project manager passed out at the cost of an entire hard copy of the VMS doc set.

I installed the (then) Compaq ODL on an NT server and wrote a procedure on how to install/add the client access to it for the PA's. I personally installed it on the project managers desktop and explained it's benefits.

Two months later they complained again and in front of "higher-ups" I asked the why they did not use the ODL. "Well I haven;t had time to install it." or "Oh, is that what that is?" were the answers.

You can lead a horse to water, but....

The Zen question is:

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

The admins question is:

What is the purpose of an un-opened book?

More to the issue at hand:

What is the difference between a system administrator and a reference librarian.
Answer: Sometimes, not much.

Cheers to the literate few!

[John Gillings]

The questions in the OpenVMS Certification exams are designed so that even if you don't "just know" the answer, you should be able to work it out using your experience. "Trivia" and "trick" questions were avoided.

I wasn't too impressed by online question generators' apparent bias for memorizing SYSGEN parameters. That's not really relevant for a certification.

There will be an article in the next OpenVMS Technical Journal, due out soon, which describes the process used to create the exams.

[Jan van den Ende]

In support of John's statement I think I should re-tell one question I do more-or-less remember.

Knowing of, but nothing about Galaxy. I never had anything to to with it, and so, hardly a reason to take serious interest in its specifics.
Of course some questions dealt with it.
The one I remember specifically asked about values of a Galaxy-specific SYSGEN param (the name of which I do not even remember!).
What I _DO_ recall it my reasoning:
- it _IS_ VMS.
- it should be implementing several values.
- how can I reconcile any of the answer-choices to the VMS logic?
-- Well, if I interpret the param value as a bitmask, just one of them fits the question.

And of course (because it IS VMS, and therefore it MUST be consistent) it was the correct answer.

As John points out: knowing how to work with it, is more important that puny details, which are lookup-up anyway if in doubt, or not very-regularly needed.

Proost.

Have one on me.

Jan

[Sergey Akimov]

I have 4-year expirience in OpenVMS. Two weeks ago I pass exam OpenVMS Systems Administration (HP certification) and my recomendation for preparation is: do not read all of 15 manuals, reffered by Exam Preparation Guide (you can`t memorize it without true experience on VMS). Instead of this try to find 'students courses books' for courses, corresponding to this exam (they hold almost all information, needed for exam). I select 3 books - compare 15 and 3. :)
Btw, I hear what exam dumps exists in Internet :) , but its cost nearly 60$, that greater then exam cost (at least in Russia) and, I think, it may be lies/fraudulent (false), because prepaid over Internet. :)

Sorry my English... add Good Luck!