Pages

Friday 9 July 2010

MCITP: Database Developer 2008

In May I passed 70-433 and in June I passed 70-451 . Which means I can call myself a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP)!!!



I started in Feb/March working through two books;


MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-433): Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Database Development Book/DVD Package and The Real MCTS SQL Server 2008 Exam 70-433 Prep Kit: Database Design


The books cover a huge range of subjects; the MS press book covered more areas and was in some ways better but was also tedious at times - often sending me off for a good nights' kip! The Prep Kit was written in (my opinion) a nicer style for the user, but didn't cover nearly enough of the exam.

I read the Prep-Kit book first, took a practice exam and scored very low! I bought the MS Press book and found this filled-in the gaps and reinforced what I learnt from the first book. I found the different writing styles very useful as it didnt feel like I was reading the same book twice.



I took 70-433 and scored 1000.



There is no official exam prep for the 70-451 exam, so I took it 2 weeks after passing the first exam. The exam was tough, very tough! I thought I'd failed. When I clicked 'finish' I closed my eyes as I really thought I would have to tell everyone at work I'd failed.



But to my amazement, I passed with 865! I spent the next 4 hours in shock. I had a hospital appointment later that day and my resting heart rate was over 100 bpm!



Now for a little rest before I start on the MCITP: Database Administrator 2008!



Thursday 8 July 2010

Website updates...

I'm now working on a few updates for the T-SQL Tidy website while I take a break between Microsoft Certification exams.

There aren't any (huge) increases in functionality. I'll just fixed problems that annoy me. :-)

Fixes;
New menu - I did the old one in a rush so it didn't really work very well.
Updated blog feed - I sorted out the problems with the formatting.
Twitter account - I created a twitter account (Apparently social networking is the next big thing!)