I passed Oracle Master Silver SQL in October 2022.

Impressions

I think it's a certification testing the minimum knowledge needed to use Oracle SQL. WITH clauses and PL/SQL are out of scope, so it's really just the basics.

I thought I might have been better off with more advanced content, but studying for the exam did give me detailed knowledge and specific rules that I probably wouldn't have picked up through self-study alone. The exam preparation helped cement SQL syntax I tend to forget (or so I feel), so I think it was worth it.

Honestly I don't use Oracle much, so I'd like to use the Oracle knowledge as a reference point to help with learning PostgreSQL and other OSS databases.

Looking back, I might have been better off taking OSS-DB Silver (a PostgreSQL certification run by LPIC-Japan) instead of Oracle Master Silver SQL. But when I started studying for Oracle Master Silver SQL, I didn't know about OSS-DB Silver, so it couldn't be helped.

How I Studied

This is probably a standard approach: I went through the official study guide (黒本) twice and completed 1.5 rounds of Udemy practice exams. I skipped the functions section in the study guide and caught up via practice exams. For the Udemy practice exams, I did 3 out of 6 twice, scoring 90%+ on all of them, so I thought I'd be fine — but my actual exam score was 75%, lower than expected.