You can substitute Exam 411: Administering Windows Server 2012, Exam 412: Configuring Advanced Windows Server 2012 Services, Exam 70-417: Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2012, or Exam 483: Programming in C#, for Exam 463.

So if you are more comfortable with Windows Server Administration or C# then these are an option instead of the BI Exam.

Now I am aware that there are some very strange people who actually enjoy the information behind the BI exam. Those people can still take the BI exam (weirdos). The point is you don’t have to. I’m afraid there are no options to avoid the Data or Admin exams though.

First a review of my goals for 2013

• Post twice a week on my blog.
  I posted 95 times which isn’t exactly twice a week but I didn’t actually start any of these goals on the first of the year so I count this one a success.
• Get my MCITP for 2008 Development and my MCSA for 2012
  I managed the MCITP and the first test for my MCSA upgrade. I’ve been taking 2 certification exams a year for the last few years so this is par for the course. I would have liked to finish that 3rd exam but it requires a significant amount of study for me. It includes the BI exam and while I’ve done some SSIS I haven’t had a chance to do any significant work with SSRS or BI in general. I’m looking forward to learning some new things on this one.
• Have 2 more articles published.
  Complete failure here. Turns out that writing 2 posts a week was my complete limit. I’m not too worried as this was a rather secondary goal.

 
So now my new goals for 2014.

• Continue to post twice a week on my blog but try to improve the quality of the posts.
• Finish my MCSA and my MCSE before June so I can use the upgrade exams that expire end of July since the MCSE exams are supposed to expire in July.
• Begin learning PowerShell. Specifically by finishing the book Windows Powershell in a month of lunches as recommended by Steven Jones

 
Of course these are just my professional goals and I always include my annual “Get healthy” and “Lose weight”. For those purists out there who feel that all goals should be specific, that just hasn’t worked for me with these particular goals. At my house we have a saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the different results.” So I’m going to try something different this year and go with a general direction.

So that’s my goals for this year and last. I’m posting them primarily to have a good record of my plans for the year. Also I have found that by sharing my goal with others I feel more motivated to complete them than I do otherwise. Feel free to share your own goals in the comments so you can have a record for yourself.

Personally I’ve always looked on certifications as mini degrees. From the point of view of an employer a 4 year degree doesn’t really mean all that much on your resume once you have been working in the industry for a few years. At least in the times I have been involved in hiring I have much preferred 4 years of experience over 4 years of college. It’s the same for a certificate. Certificates have a far greater worth to someone with no experience than someone with even a few years of experience. Although you will see the odd employer that requires a given degree or a given certification level most of the time they are only used to compare two people of otherwise equal skill and experience. That being said degrees and certifications do have worth. They imply two things. First that the individual had the drive and dedication to spend however much time it took to get that degree or certification. This is no small thing. It means the individual is a self starter and motivated. Both certainly good things to have in an employee. Second, they have some level of knowledge, however fleeting, however cursory, in the subject. I’ve heard it said that there are people with certificates in SQL Server that can’t perform even a simple backup. Probably true, but I’ll bet that as that person is trained, and learns to perform the backup they will have more background information (FULL vs SIMPLE recovery for example) and train faster than someone who’s never even looked at SQL Server. In neither case do degrees or certifications have anything to do with experience or even the ability to handle the job they were “trained” for. I will point out though that there are exceptions. As I understand it the lab portion of the MCM/MCA certifications was ment to show exactly that.

So how about on a personal level? Well again the degree comparison still holds. Both degrees and certifications provide a course of study. A structure forcing an individual to learn things they might not otherwise. For example I would never have gotten into computers if I hadn’t been perusing an Accounting degree that required a programming class. And along the same lines I would never have even heard of CDC and some other more obscure parts of SQL Server if they hadn’t been required for certifications I was getting ready for. And it should be mentioned that there is a certain sense of pride and accomplishment that go along with getting a degree/certification that shouldn’t be sneered at.

Finally, to those of you who say that the lower level certifications are worthless, that someone can get their MCITP/MCSE with a couple of weeks of effort with a book or two, I say “So What!” I would much rather hire the person that at least had enough interest to read the book, to make the effort, than the person who didn’t.

Just a point here. When I get a question wrong I review the SUBJECT I get wrong, I don’t just memorize that particular answer. I took a practice test today and got a question wrong on partitioning. I’m now going to create a couple of partitioned tables over and over again until I can do it without referencing the books. Then I’m going to practice switching, merging and splitting until again I can do it without referencing BOL. And yet none of that is the most important thing I work on. It’s a simple skill but vastly important.

Reading the questions and answers carefully!

It’s that simple. Almost 50% of the times I get an answer wrong it’s because I missed something in the question and/or answers. For example in a question about what application to use to start the “SQL Server Agent” I answered “SQL Server Configuration Manager”. Of course I managed to skim over the very first fact in the question. The instance in question is part of a cluster which in this case had a rather significant impact on the answer.

The question wasn’t all that hard, but without that vital piece of information I got it wrong. Even though once I saw the correct answer I immediately knew what I had missed and why I’d gotten the question wrong.

So I guess if I have any piece of advice for getting ready to take a certification exam it’s practice taking tests. Read questions on-line, make sure you read every bit of the question, make sure you read every bit of the answers. It would suck to fail the exam just because you weren’t being careful!

So having passed my first exam I was ready to do the next. Unfortunately I discovered that I had waited too long to take any more exams for 2005. They expired shortly after I took that first exam. So I started prepping for the 2008 exams. I set myself a goal of getting MCITPs in both Development and Administration. And now after close to two years I have finally finished that goal! Just under the wire since the exams for 2008 will no longer be given after June.

So what am I going to do now? Well I’ve already started to research what study materials I want to use for the first of the 2012 MCSA exams. My current goal is to get the MCSA this year and the MCSE:Data Platform next year.

So why am I getting all of these certifications? Well if I ever have to look for a job again (and let’s hope if I do it’s a long time from now) they will look good on my resume, but that certainly isn’t a primary reason. Primarily I’m getting them for two reasons. First because it gives me an excellent format to study SQL Server. There are lots of things I want to learn that aren’t on the exams, and I work on those between exams. For example I’m reading Grant Fritchey’s book on execution plans right now. But the skills required on the exams cover subjects I hadn’t even realized existed in some cases, such as Change Data Capture, or just hadn’t had an opportunity to work with recently, such as replication and full text indexes. Second because it provides me with a sense of accomplishment. It’s a way of keeping score with myself. One of these days I may even start studying for the MCM for the same reasons. Once I have “caught up” with the current technology that is.