Hello,
I recently passed the 70-433 exam and now I am looking to do the 70-451 exam, latter half of next year probably. Reading the content of 70-451 it does sound like there is some blurring the distinction between developer and administrator so I looked at the DBA sister to 70-433, 70-432. That's kind of interesting too.
As I will have to fund these two myself, and I cannot afford the £1000s to do the class based courses, what self-study materials do people recommend? I can afford the online modules. I looked at the MS 70-432 book but apparently it's bad, I also looked at "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Step by Step" which is also allegedly bad.
I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks,
Mark
Have a read of the following learning plan - learning.microsoft.com/.../LearningPlanV2.aspx
PRO exams are usuallly theory based (hence the lack of available books) so it can be a little difficult to study for such exams. What I usually do is use the skills measured in the exam and then research the skills using MSDN/TechNet online. "Release Notes" and "What's New" sections of a technologies documentation provide some usefull information.
www.microsoft.com/.../exam.aspx
Jeff WhartonMSysDev, MDbDsgnMgt, MCT, MCPD, MCITP, MCDBA Mr. Wharty’s RamblingsMicrosoft Transcript
Thanks.
I would still like to do 70-432 first though to help build a better foundation. In small(er) software houses where there is no DBA as such I think knowing both sides of the coin is very useful. As far as I can tell, no alleged 70-432 book is actually any good!
I can't provide feedback on any books for 70-432 as I used the skills measured in the exam to research topics using MSDN and TechNet. I have been using SQL Server since v7 though so it wasn't difficult for me to skill-up on new features.
Once you've got your material sorted and you need a little help practising for the 70-432 exam, then i suggest you try this site:
www.accelerated-ideas.com/free-mcts-70-432-practice-test-questions.aspx
Free practice test for the SQL exam...
Enjoy and good luck