I just finished the core training; however, I am not quite sure about the next steps. I feel like the gold test requires more advanced knowledge which cannot be accomplished by only finishing the online core training, correct?
In addition, do we have to pay for the gold test or the core test? What if we fail the tests? In order to retake them, do we have to pay? What would be the passing grade? 100/100 without any false answer?
What is the difficulty of the gold test and core test? Are they similar to the challenges of the online core training?
Core Cert should be able completed after going through the videos.
Gold requires that you understand a bit more how parts work together. If you have a strong scripting/ database background prior to going through the videos you will be ready to take the gold quicker.
Reporting is the most difficult point for me. What is needed for the test is not explained anywhere. Anyway, what is very interesting is what you learn by trying to do the things they tell you. I would like to recommend doing it.
You also will want to make sure you have a system you can use for alarm notification. The hardest part for me was actually getting a setup where I could email alarms. Our firewall completely killed that aspect of Ignition. We ended up getting a cloud server.
Yes you need to pay some amount for each certification (core and gold) unless your company is an integrator. It’s free of cost for the members of integrator company.
There are usually 2-3 attempts for both core and gold and you pretty much cover everything within it.
For the gold certification you need perfect knowledge of python, SQL and some sort of CSS, HTML (for perspective module)
Difficult parts of Gold Certification are: Vision: you need good knowledge of SQL here.
Perspective: you need good understanding of perspective containers, the use of transforms and sql
Report: this will be difficult if you’ve not worked on this module before. Have a look at SQL nested query part, Report table grouping and parent child part. That’s all you need for the reporting
Alarm notifications: take good understanding of types of roasters. You need python here.
That’s it. A hint to learn this well is, download IA demo project and play with them. Good luck.
Edit: For more context. This is my opinion on what I went though and all information is subjective and not objective.
I just took my ignition training on 8.1 to100% so I could take the core test, made a project for practice, and took the Core test, will do gold next, and here is the feedback from my personal experience with the test but mostly training information:
Positives:
A Huge amount of information. Detailed and easy to find
The instructor are very clear and straight forward
The forums are amazing and you get answer rather quickly. (did not use for test-training and work questions only)
The documentation is great and helps put me in the right directions majority of the time
Improvements that would have helped me learn quicker:
Build a project from start to finish (Most important to me) - This by far the best way on how I learn and retain information. My background comes from hard labor and to give an example on what I mean. I can teach you through a book how to hammer a nail, but until you do it your self by failing trying again an again get to fight in the end, most will not be able to hit the nail on the head right away until more practice has been done. I learn faster by learning the how first, then going back and understanding the why.
Side note: Some videos had data being used that we were not given to us to use so I could not practice what I was being taught.
Different instructor. - I like all the instructors but there are many different styles of teaching. Some when steady while other were fast and I had to keep rewinding to get the full picture
Properties - It would been nice to have an example of what properties are accesses where and how. - There is a good bit of documentation on this, but I noticed there are multiple way to grab the same properties. As well as, some properties are "hidden" and I had to test both system.tag.browse and system.tag.getconfigure and make my own documentation so I knew which ignition function grabs which properties.
In class vs online opinion:
I personally think mandatory in class is a mistake. A remedy would be "in class" but can be done online and not in a building or facility. This is due to everything is going digital, saves time, gas, money, and thinking about future generations, those coming from or going to college, online course are becoming a norm.
Online classes would give us the benefit of having someone to talk with directly and ask questions. The current set up of just the video is great, but when you come across an issue it always great to have a subject matter expert at our finger tips.
Did you take the test, or the training? Because you should not be taking the test without having built up some experience building projects start to finish on your own. The test is not supposed to be training. That's the whole point of this long thread, and the core of the abuse of the certification system.
I've done core, and soon to finish gold. My only gripe is I wish they included perspective more. It's such a small portion I don't think it really validates perspective skills.
But
I assume you don't mean forum, as that is not allowed for the test. Which means you were reaching out to the training email in a tutor like manner.
Which is the whole reason for graders burnout, and why these changes started in the first place.
Which ruins it for people who were doing it the right way. Because it was a decent setup.
Also, what everyone is discussing how to avoid. You're helping prove against what you want.
I built everything that was provided in the course, some parts I could not replicate due to different data, but eventually I got to a point where I could created my own personal project. Went over all the videos multiple times, documentation, and forms to do so. I would create my own tag providers, UDTs, instances, SQL databases, etc to finish it.
My original comment was just a recommendation/s for a way for those who learn like me to grasp the concepts in a way that it more productive for that learning style.
Opps fixed the forum typo. Did not use the forum for the test.
I will go back and state what is used for the test vs training. I did mix up both scenarios as an all out review for both.
As for the avoid aspect this does not pertain to the email I received this morning. I got an email how people discuss/ed their feelings on this topic, so I put my own thoughts on it is all. All subjective and not objective
