And it came to pass. Or rather I just passed the second test in the MySQL Developer exam. One of the nice things about doing Pearson Vue's system is you get instant feedback, so when I clicked the 'End Exam' button the next screen said 'You passed'. No congratulations or any namby-pamby stuff like that though. I'm a little sceptical whether the next stage will work: the folks at Sun/MySQL HQ have to realise that I passed both tests and send 40 naked virgins er, sorry, I mean a certificate to my home address.

The second test was harder than the first. I counted that 25 out of the 70 questions were multiple-checkbox answers, i.e. the really tricky ones where are there are numerous ways to get it wrong compared to only one way to get it right. As for the plain multiple choice questions, there were as many as 7 answers to choose from, so there's no way you could just hit a random answer and hope. At the end of the test, it revealed the pass mark was 43 out of 70, just like the first paper. I got 63 correct. The test center also prints out a little breakdown of how you did in each section, which they gave to me on my way out. It told me that Database Metadata section was my weak point. It's true, I find remembering the names of all the tables/columns in the information_schema database really tedious, and indeed pointless when there is a perfectly good family of 'show' statements which achieve the same thing. Standards compliance? Feh.

Anyhow, now I can call myself a MySQL Certified Developer and get a dolphin logo tattooed onto my forehead.

One of life's little ironies: the test was delivered using Pearson Vue's proprietary Windows software on a Windows PC, so questions about the MySQL database were no doubt stored in SQL Server, Access or somesuch.

Note to the testing authorities: maybe it was because of the way questions were stored, but many of the SQL samples had some spaces omitted, e.g.

SELECT * FROMtable WHEREa = b;

After seeing this pattern a few times, I realised they weren't trying to trip me up with dodgy SQL, it was just a formatting error.