In terms of content covered and requirements satisfied for the Oracle certifications, these two exams are nearly identical. Not surprisingly, the two generate a significant amount of confusion and questions from candidates trying to decide which one they should pick. In this article, I’ll discuss the two tests and point out the reasons why you might choose one over the other.

Any of these tests will fulfill the SQL requirement for the “Oracle PL/SQL Developer Certified Associate” or “Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate” tracks. DBA and Developer candidates must take one of these two tests or a third exam option: “1Z0-047: Oracle Database SQL Expert.” The SQL Expert test is considerably more difficult than 1Z0-007 or 1Z0-051. It is a viable option to satisfy the SQL requirement, but requires considerably more knowledge of Oracle SQL. In this article I will cover only the two SQL Fundamentals exams.

The differences between the two tests can be summed up in two words, age and content. However, a two-word summary isn’t really helpful in making a decision, so I’ll break it down a bit further.

Age:
Test 1Z0-007 was written against Oracle 9i as the name suggests. Oracle 10G was released in 2004 and Oracle 11G in 2007. Although Oracle Corporation has not provided a release date for the 12c version of the database, it is likely to be quite soon. 1Z0-007 has never been updated to newer versions and has a reasonable chance of being retired soon. In a sense, test withdrawal doesn’t matter, since Oracle certifications don’t expire. My first DBA certification was on Oracle 7.3, for example. That certification is not yet expired. However, it is no longer relevant because no one uses Oracle 7.3. In that context, getting the 9i version of the test means your SQL certification has a head start on becoming irrelevant. By contrast, 1Z0-051 was written specifically for Oracle 11G. Since it’s about eight years newer than version 9i, it’s unlikely that this test will be retired for many years.

Delighted:
The 9i test has forty-two themes compared to forty-one for 11G. Of those, thirty-four themes are identical or comparable between the two. In one case, a single theme on 9i splits into two themes for 11G. Of the eight themes in 9i that don’t exist in 11G, three are in iSQL*Plus. This application has been removed in the current version of Oracle. Four of the other five subjects not on the 11G exam are minor topics that have been consolidated into larger subject areas on the 11G exam. For example, “Describing a view” became part of the “Creating simple and complex views” topic. The last of the eight topics was moved to the SQL Expert test.

There are six themes in the 11G test that are not in the 9i. Of them, three involve the use of SET operators (UNION, INTERSECT, MINUS). Another topic is about the use of conditional operators in SQL (CASE and DECODE). One of the topics is about queries that generate cartesian products. The final topic is about the structure of the Oracle table. All of these are valuable additions to the SQL Fundamentals test.

Conclusion:
While the two tests are approximately 80% similar in content covered, of the 20% that is different, the 1Z0-051 exam far outperforms the 1Z0-007 when it comes to the relevance of the information. Unless you have a very good reason for choosing the 9i version, I can’t imagine choosing it over the 11G exam. If you are very familiar with Oracle 9i and comfortable using iSQL plus, then I can see the possibility of choosing the earlier version. However, if you are approaching Oracle SQL in the cold, I highly recommend looking for the newest version of the SQL Fundamentals exam. Whichever you choose, good luck on the test.