FWDE -Foss Web Deployment Engineer

To start with, we offer Certificate Examination in the area of web deployment of the LAMP stack which is the backbone of the new web 2.0 explosion. It is to be noted that the candidate will not be tested in programming skills per se, but only in his/her capability of deploying a FOSS web application in production.

What you need to know to attempt this certification?

You need to be reasonably conversant in building a simple website with one of the available LAMP stacks. You need to be able to set up a virtual host using a webserver. You need to be able to put your code under version control and deploy the same remotely. You need to be able to set up user registration, and authentication via http. You need to be able to generate email from the site. You need to be conversant with setting up a bug tracking and issue reporting system.

How will this certification benefit you?

Most web2.0 companies are on the smaller side with fewer employees. Since they work in the FOSS arena, they expect their employees to have some all round skills rather than narrow specialisation. A typical employee of a web2.0 company may specialise in one area, but he/she is expected to be a bit of a jack of all trades and contribute (or at least understand) other areas of deployment. Of course there are also a large number of companies with a just 2 or 3 employees who do not specialise at all and do everything from programming, design, database management and actual deployment.

How will the certification be conducted?

Topics for the Web Deployment Certificate are the following:

• Virtual hosting using Apache, lighttpd or Nginx
• Database backend using MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite
• Web front-end using CSS, HTML and JavaScript
• Business logic using Perl, PHP, Python or Ruby
• User Authentication
• Version control using Subversion, Git, Mercurial or other VCS of choice
• Bug-tracking system using Bugzilla or Trac

During the examination, the candidate is expected to set up a web application using the above components which would all be pre-installed. The candidate is free to use web frameworks, tool kits and ORMs to do the above, but he/she will have to install them himself/herself. The application will have to comply with certain standards and the expected standards/RFCs will be published here later along with more details. Candidates are free to use the internet as a resource as needed and also to bring other materials on paper or storage media. After the set up is done and demonstrated, the candidate will be asked to make certain modifications that have to be successfully implemented. The result of the Test will be simple Pass/Fail.

The examination is day long and hands on, and is conducted at NRCFOSS in the AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus of Anna University Chennai. At a later date, and depending on the need, arrangements may be made to have the examination held at other locations in the country.

For the current promotional offer, the Registration and Examination fees is only Rs.5,000/- (all inclusive), which is subject to revision at a later date. The date of the first examination will be announced here soon.