On this page, you can find information about all sources that were used while compiling this material.
There are five of them.
- First of all, this is Roopesh Ramklass book (see below). I think this is the most definitive guide you can find to start with.
Many people say, it is an incomplete guide and does not provide all situations you may encounter on your exam, and this is why they have failed their exam at the first time. And it may be true. The book does not have all possible situations described, but it definitely contains about 70-75% of the information you may need in order to pass this exam. So, I recommend starting from reading this book and doing all exercises and test stored on the CD. If you will be able to accomplish all tests with 85%+ grade, then it is a good indication and you may consider yourself ready for the next step. But don’t be overconfident about your performance. If you are not passing every single test by completing this book with 85%+ rate, you should try harder by segregating your weak areas and spending more time there. If you won’t reach 85%+ rate after completing this book, it is not a problem. You may come back to it later and try again. This is what I did. I switched to other sources and practiced there. I’ve gained some more experience using other sources, and then came back to this book and passed every single test shown below with 85-90% rate. There are eleven tests, representing 11 chapters. I recommend creating a Custom Exam as shown below, after reading each chapter and practicing with test questions. Don’t read a whole book and then practicing all tests. Do it one by one.
In fact, I’ve passed these chapters with following grades :
Chapter 02: Data Retrieval Using SQL SELECT Statement test with 86% grade
Chapter 03: Restricting and Sorting Data test with 88% grade
Chapter 04: Single-Row Functions test with 85% grade
Chapter 5: Using Conversion Functions and Conditional Expressions test with 92% grade
Chapter 6: Reporting Aggregated Data Using the Group Functions test with 87% grade
Chapter 7: Displaying Data from Multiple Tables test with 92% grade
Chapter 8: Using Subqueries to Solve Problems test with 83% grade
Chapter 9: Using the Set Operators test with 92% grade
Chapter 10: Manipulating Data test with 81% grade
Chapter 11: Using DDL Statements to Create and Manage Tables test with 95% grade
After completing each individual section, there was a Practice Exam containing all these 75 questions in one bundle with 120 minutes allowed. I have accomplished Practice Exam with 87%. That wasn’t bad at all.
Now you have to examine what kind of mistakes did you encounter on this final exam, so your weak areas will be identified. You must go and spent more time on finding why after completing a whole book, you still have some areas where your knowledge is not so great. In my case my weak areas can be seen below :
As we can see some areas were passed with 100% and some with 66.6%. As soon as each individual topic is passed with 65% and more, you are guaranteed to pass an exam. In my case, the lowest was 66.6% in two areas.
Don’t hesitate to pass this exam several times to make sure that your grades are stable. See attempt #2 below
See attempt #3 below
See attempt #4 below
See attempt #5 below
See attempt #6 below
See attempt #7 below
2. The second source that has been used for preparation was www.oraclestudy.com
They are selling a two months subscription for an unlimited number of attempts to pass their online tests. I must admit, their tests somewhat outdated, means they were valid like a year ago or so. Despite that 90% of their questions were very useful for me. Basically, I have done the most significant training using this program in terms of volume. When you are in training – you want volume, you want the number of questions and different situations be as big as possible. And they do provide :
- 350+ Practical and Real Time Scenario Based Certification Questions similar to actual certification exam and their correct answers for assessment. [They really do provide up to 350 different questions, but not of them similar to actual certification exam. I would say only 80-90% would be relevant. Some are not anymore because the current version is 12c, and it has new features that are incompatible anymore with previous features. And all these 350+ questions were compiled from previous versions of Oracle, not the latest one]
- 2 Months Unlimited Access to online Oracle 1Z0-061 certification practice exam. [They really do provide 2 months unlimited access, but be careful and store all your results and their questions on disk, because they do disappear after some time under your account. You still have access to your account after some months, but the history of your tests will be erased. So I’ve stored all my tests on my hard drive, and was able to revise them later]
- Personalized Result Book to Track Your Progress. [Yes, it is a useful feature, you can see how you progressed, but it also will disappear over time, so if you want it – you better store it when you done with your tests]
- Result History with attended questions and answers. [They really do provide 2 months unlimited access, but be careful and store all your results and their questions on disk, because they do disappear after some time under your account. You still have access to your account after some months, but the history of your tests will be erased. So I’ve stored all my tests on my hard drive, and was able to revise them later]
- Price is just $26.90 USD, lowest compared to any other online or offline materials. [And I’ve found this price very attractive compared to everything else we had on the market by that time. So yes, just for $26.9 you will get unlimited access to practicing 350+ questions. I guess it worth it. ]
- They offer an unlimited attempt to practice with their online full/mini practice exam. Each exam attempt fetches random 75 questions(full)/37 questions(mini) from our premium question bank that contains 350+ most probable premium questions prepared by our domain experts. [It was very useful to select Mini test or Full Test. Full test, which is 75 questions takes me about an hour to pass. When I did not have that much time, I normally would select Mini version which is 37 questions]
- Every time you will face questions in random order with shuffled multiple choice answers to make your exam experience more challenging. [And from a certain point you become remembering all these questions and answers, you became familiar with all your mistakes and not doing them anymore. And this is the process of learning. But don’t worry, you will learn all these questions in about two months only – by the time when your subscription is about to end, so you won’t be boring during these two months. ]
- If you will be able to score 80% and more after this program in the final exam, you may treat it as a success. In fact, I was scoring 85-88% in my last tests on this program. Overall I think money was well spent and it is a good program which you must take before moving further
5. The fifth source that has been used for preparation (and probably the most important one) was https://www.transcender.com/ To find more about this specific exam follow this link https://www.transcender.com/quick-review/oracle/1z0-061.kap
They offer you 124 practice exam questions and 131 Flashcards. Transcender Kaplan preparation program is the most advanced and it has much more relevant information than any other program you may find in the internet. In most cases, all these Dumps which you may find for free in the internet, are outdated already. They have been valid like two or three years ago. Since that time a lot of things have been changed in ORACLE SQL certification program, but they still selling you the old test scenarios and questions. Therefore, I strongly recommend Transcender Kaplan as a choice, despite it is much more expensive than ORACLESTUDY.COM, it worth it. And the reason is – 6-month Pass-The-First-Time Guaranteed*. If you buy a Transcender Cert practice test and fail the corresponding exam within 6 months of activation, simply return the product to Transcender for a full, no-hassle refund. It is a good proposition. Even if you fail, you can always get your money back. It may cost you from $99 to $129 depending on the options you chose.
Try first all of their Optimized Tests (see below). They gave a funny definition of FAIL and PASS. Everything which is not 100% is treated as FAIL. Overall I have scored 71% on all Optimized Tests, which is not so bad if you take it first time.
Don’t forget about wonderful addition from Transcender Kaplan – 131 FlashCards. It is a series of short questions grouped by topics ( same way as Optimized Tests ) – see below
I recommend selecting the maximum number of FlashCards available for each topic, rather than use the Random Generator. And of course, all FlashCards must be accomplished with 100% rate. If you are not getting 100% on FlashCards, you are not ready yet for any real tests yet, including Optimized Tests, Practice Tests, etc . Below you can find my results in FlashCards examination grouped by topics.
Transcender “Introduction” FlashCards
Transcender “Retrieving data using SQL Statement” FlashCards
Transcender “Restricting and Sorting data” FlashCards
Transcender “Using Single-Row functions to customize output” FlashCards
Transcender “Using Conversion Functions and Conditional Expressions” FlashCards
Therefore I have revised my answers in details and some of them were published here to indicate the most difficult situations