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So I took my first hands-on class from Oracle this month.

I'm usually of the 'sit down with a book and computer' camp when I need to learn something new, but where I work we needed RMAN proficiency quickly. I thought it might be better to get out of the office for a few days and buckle down on the topic.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the class. I went to a few Sybase classes in the late 90's and found them costly (US$4000 for 4 days) and underwhelming in content. Worst part is that the instructor was basically reading a script and didn't know much about the ins and outs of the features covered in the class. It was a replication class and people had some tough, but not unreasonable questions. We pretty much heard 4 days worth of "i'll get back to you".

So overall I was very pleased with the Oracle class. It was held at a MicroTek training center in downtown Washington DC by an Oracle employee (Ira).

My main beef wasn't really an issue for me, but was an issue for other people in the class. The training materials were set up for Unix/Linux but the workstations we were using were Windows.

Keep in mind if your organization is an Oracle Partner you can receive a 35% discount on hands-on training. This brought the cost of a 3-day US$1,800 course down to US$1,170. Basically the discount paid for all of my travel and lodging expenses.

-- Dave