70-463 _ Epic

zaleonardz

This is going to be an epic module...

I have done the first 2 CBT nuggets on my own environment (Both the Adventureworks and the AdventureWorksDW) are available for download via google, so if your prepping for this one, its a must do.

The PowerPivot thing ROCKS...

By the way, Powerpivot is no longer a option for office 2013, only available in the professional addition, which is annoying.


Im going to make some money off of this..

zaleonardz

And I just got my Oracle server working via Linked Server VPN. Let the cubes begin.

I have to say this, after 10 years, SQL Server is by far more epic then I could have ever imagined...

I wonder what the exams are going to look like, this should be an evaluated Lab exam, Im stressing on how they are going to ask these "highline" questions

N2IT

I found powerpivot extremely limited and clunky in an enterprise, it can't handle massive data sets. I love BO and Cognos, way more capability.

Tawaz

@zaleonardz - how is 463 compared to 462.Which part of SA are you dude?

zaleonardz

I am in Johannesburg.

463 and 462 are worlds apart, and far closer to 461

its basically SSIS and data warehousing,

I have been working all week so no studies, but essentially SSIS is a point and click data transformation tool to populate/update your data warehouse and creating the environment for your cube reporting.

N2IT, BOBJ has been my BI tools for the last 10 years, and i love it, I have another client at the moment for whom I am actually writing a mass mailer system using SAP BO Crystal, and making heavy usage of the COM objects to generate documentation, is SAP business one. It is a membership institution, so large amounts of the the "data" that they need is in the form of individual letters integrated into email.

BO has also served every single request I have ever gotten for data analysis and reporting, and I usually do not bother aggrigating at DB level, but it is a dead technology as far as the "CV hunters" are concerned.

I have written several apps with deisnged end point delivery data flow to individual users based on their defined role within the organization, but as said, in SA its a dead skill, they want SSAS and SSRS, and all the work with SSIS in the middle.

Maybe I just dont get it all yet, as I will increase my studies this weekend on 463 quite a couple of notches up. I have gotten my test enviroment linked to my oracle enviroment, and I have been "slicing" this data set for years, so it will be interesting to see how it ends up, and if the OLAP is actually the answer, I much prefer the on demand live extract based on extensive views that I have

My initial impression on SSRS is "bla"...

maybe I am wrong, and wil still learn, but BOBJ any day of the week for me.

zaleonardz

I got lazy.... and kept rescheduling and rescheduling.

I wrote today, and failed, 635 or something daft.

I did the full CBT nuggets thing, and found the presenter to once again be far too nerdy.

The only way I am going to get it, is a DW from scratch, which is what I have now started doing, and since doing my own thing, a lot more is fallen into place.

However, without seeing the SSAS part of all of this as of yet, ie, the awesome part, this really really is a lot of hard work....

The exam was brutal.

I am also working with Data that I know, using an oracle linked server, if I had to do this with the inconsistant examples shown everywhere....

I write again on Tuesday, as I dont want to leave it for too long again,

SSIS is extremely powerful. and for ETL, probably the best tool I have ever used, would have helped me so much in the past, but this building a data warehouse thing... when I know what I can do with crystal reports...

I am going to have to self study using every single component in order to pass this exam.

How many of us here have done 463 and have any advice, other then a .40 cal hollowpoint or a bottle of ******...

N2IT

WEBI here and I agree SSRS is junk in comparison. SSAS is pretty nice you can drop it in Excel and do large aggregations. Cubes are incredibly fast and always try to use them if at all possible. In fact we have several cubes set up in a Universe for OLAP report building.

Glad to meet another BO fan

Agreed SSIS is a great tool to utilize for ETL for MS SQL Server. Informatica is ETL we use for our Teradata environment.

zaleonardz

The organization I do most of my reporting work for we use OLTP and BO, and honestly, there was not a report to date that I could not do, half with my eyes closed.

I got requested to redo the entire workflow/indvidual based reporting for the company as roles and people have changed, I started at 3pm, and by about 1am, I had redone 73 reports with BO.

But BO is dead, unless you combine it with SAP Hana and some other SAP modules, ABAP and so forth.

But DO you really want to spend all of that money for the certification, and then still be a K2 snot nose that wont find work...

I have actually asked a good couple of ex R3 guys how's life, and non of them are smiling at the moment, product is too expensive.

I have been working on SAP business One recently, which was a trip down memory lane, I actually way back when wrote an addon that integrated BO into SBO, which was fun to do.

This 70-463 thing, because I am remote, I have to do everything first into a staging area, which is good pracice anyway, and then transform, my sales fact table is a couple of million rows, and because idiotic BAAN cannot store null values, there are a lot of date errors... bleh...

What I find odd though, is while SSIS is really "gui'ee... its still mostly 461... lots of queries.

However, I do see a big plus,

in my OLTP world, we have several custom "dimensions" for lack of a better term, or custom reporting selections, such as 3 levels down on the product group, regions, functions, line of business ect.

The problem that we have, and always have had, is that its master data type stuff, so if you change a customers region, its not actually recorded at time of sale, and looks like the regional data just changed now, I do see how the DW can solve this issue... just need to figure out how.

The point I was trying to make though, 463 is self study, you have to apply it to real life, else your not going to get it,

I did find the MVA better then CBT nuggets, again, same as 461...

Oh well, we shall see on Tuesday....

N2IT

We are implementing HANA on our database in a few months. I am excited about it, can't wait!

zaleonardz

So I passed 70.463 today,, and I feel... incomplete.

SSIS is incredible, and it is a tool that I will make full use of it

But the topic of "Building and implementing a datawarehouse", I do not feel I achieved.

Also, I figured out halfway though, that I need to be a programmer, luckily, I have several years of coding using OO, stupid stuff but I do have the skills

My prep was MVA, CBT nuggets and measureUp, as with the previous modules.

The only thing that worked for me, was to look at each and every single object in the control and dataflow section, evaluate its properties, and play with it.

I understood the schema design of star/snowflake, and the SSIS way to "create" a data warehouse, but really believe they should have touched more on the SSAS side,

All that work in self play, without really knowing what I was doing it for,

So while I should feel ecstatic that I have my MCSA SQL 2012, I have already booked for 70-466 and already preparing.

I dont know why I am bitching, but 461 was conclusive, 462 if you got it you got it, 463 is like somebody giving you a tool, telling you how it works, but not allowing you to actually use it.

What I think is they should have focused more on the SSIS side of it, left the fact and dim building for SSAS completely,