70-453 Scheduled, Finally!

RobertKaucher

09/11/2010 - Finally found time and money to schedule it!

earweed

Good luck man! You'll nail it.

TheShadow

Good Luck Robert you have waited for this for a while.

bertieb

Not that you'll need it I'm sure, but good luck!

RobertKaucher

Passed! There were about 5 or 6 questions I was not sure about, a few I really had to read the question on, and a couple about somethings I had never heard of. Scored 890. There were a few that were about watching the syntax in T-SQL statements. Most of those were pretty easy. I am going to write a blog post giving some tips on the things I think my study material did not cover.

apena7

Congrats!

TheShadow

Great going congratulations.

bertieb

Awesome job Robert, congrats

RobertKaucher

Thanks, guys. My boss has said that the BI exams would be the best or me next as far as on the job utility. But I think the MCTS DB Developer might be a low hanging fruit... The BI stuff just kind of turns my brain to mush, though I find it quite interesting. I recall back in 2006/2007 when I first started looking at SQL Server it was the same way. I just had a real hard time getting my head around it.

I think I'll actually start prep for the 433 next. This will give me time to continue studying SSAS more slowly and let stuff settle in my brain better...

dynamik

Congrats dude!

Is the BI material one of those things that is a pain to learn, but it's good knowledge to have once you're through it all?

earweed

Congrats Robert!
Great job and I'm hoping to see more passes from you in the future. Glad to see your work situation got under control so that you could go back to getting some more certs to help your career.

RobertKaucher

dynamik wrote: »

Congrats dude!

Is the BI material one of those things that is a pain to learn, but it's good knowledge to have once you're through it all?

I think the standard DBA needs to have a conceptual understanding of it. But other than that I think it is really its own specialization. The odd thing is my company does not rally exist. It's a joint venture between two large multinational corporations. So we suffer from all of the challenges of large corporations (multi-forest, multi-domain, departments that don't talk or are uncoorperative, etc) but because the joint venture is small we also suffer from the challenges of a small business. Our group doesn't have to do end user support, but we are the IT department for our company meaning we are DBAs, developers and admins all in one. The company has stated it is pushing hard for business analytics and we are the ones they are looking to for the information they need. So now we can add BI developers to the list of hats!

erpadmin

First all, Robert, congratulations....

Second, data warehousing/BI is VERY hot in the DB realm. If you can learn data modeling, cubes, high level BI reporting (such as what you'd get from Crystal Reports), that would definitely make your star shine. The SQL developing stuff is nice, but I would want to stay in the DBA realm and BI/DW stuff allows for that to happen. Developing is very useful though when you want to optimize written code (instead of friggin writing it...lol).

Congratulations once again....I definitely wish to join you in getting SQL certified one day. (Though I'm just going straight to 2008....might as well......)

RobertKaucher

I intend on getting all of the SQL Server 2008 certs. Although I will not be able to get the MCM on SQL Server one of my goals is to meet all of the requirements and do all of the pre-course study. Just a goal I have set... The MCTS DB Developer exam just looks pretty easy. I have a good grasp of about 2/3 of the objectives as it is.

Grynder

Congrats.
It seems our career paths are very similar. From your blog I see you are doing a lot of Sharepoint stuff on top of SQL. I just moved my company to SP 2010 and plan on taking the certs once some study material comes out. I also plan on following the BI track for my SQL certs.

RobertKaucher

I really want to get the MCITP: SharePoint 2010 Developer cert, but I am concerned about over extending and getting off my ultimate career path. I certainly want to get the rest of the SQL Server 2008 certs, and this seems like a lot of work for 2011 by itself. So maybe I will leave SharePoint certs for 2012... Just in time for the SharePoint 2013 release... <sigh>