I have just been watching the channel 9 tour of the SQL Server team, and Soner Terek used the phrase “Not something you can write Mom about” when speaking about the engine of Microsoft SQL Server.

Sums up some major parts of my career so far, it can be quite challenging explaining to people what it is I do.

Now finished the book I have been working through, so I have covered all of the material relating to 70-315. Of course, that is not all of it so I am now working on practice exams to show up my weak areas.

And it is going pretty well too. I am beginning to get ready to book the exam, but it looks like all of the places have gone from the local test centres in December which is a disappointment.

As for the material, I am itching to get to know the other areas. I have three exams to sit to get MCSD.NET, this exam included. In terms of the learning experience I am really interested to see what the material says in the Web Services and Server Components exam. I will most likely do the windows exam before that, though, as the material shares more with 70-315.

Since passing my SQL Server exam at the end of October, I’ve been focussing on bringing myself up to speed on C# and .NET with a view to my first coding exam being 70-315 developing web stuff with C# and VS.NET.

It’s not as if I’ve completely ignored things over the years, just that I’ve only really had opportunity to skim the surface.

My recent efforts have also been an opportunity to try out for myself the materials that are used to maintain and enhance the technical skills of the people we employ at work.

First stage I went through was a consideration of computer based training from appdev which is a series of CDs featuring the dulcet tones of Mr Jesse Liberty going through the fundamentals of the C# language. I was really impressed at the quality of the training, even if it was a bit back to basics when looking at the basics of conditions, looping, and function calls.

Having completed that I’ve moved on to working through the QUE book for 70-315 which I think is really good as well. It is completely focussed on the exam, following the exam outline with material and exercises for each heading and subtopic. Having got to chapter 6 I’m beginning to reassess how many of the exercises that I carry out in detail as I think the pace is a bit slow. But that said, on what I’ve found so far I would still recommend the book. Each chapter ends with a number of example questions in the style of the exams – something I think is very helpful. The book also starts with a discussion of learning techniques and processes, a useful analysis of how information is retained and related to what is already known.

As for what I think, the bulk of the detail to date has been C# the language. I continue to get caught out a bit by the case sensitivity of the language, I tend to add too many capitals to keywords because of my long history with Basic and scripting derived languages. That said, I continue to be impressed by the support for object orientation and the support given through the framework classes. It all makes a lot of sense and has a kind of coherent ring in the design that all fits together really well.

What I would say though, is that you’re not going to learn this stuff without having a full copy of Visual Studio .NET, one of the versions of SQL Server and one of the Microsoft operating systems that supports IIS e.g. XP PRO or better. Not an insignificant collection of kit.

Ok, I’ll start by declaring that I have no vested interests in the above company and individual. I only know the guy exists because he is an MCP Hero and reads books on the train. The other interesting thing is that Rhana Consulting used to have their business address in the same street as Cedalion used to be in, Maritime Street in Leith.

I’m forging ahead with what I think is my fourth iteration of the Microsoft Developer premier certification title, MCSD.NET and diving in to the excellent technology that is C#. Having a recent look for Mr Blair and Rhana Consulting to add further motivation to my certification momentum drew a blank, in particular their website which used to be at http://www.rhana.co.uk/ has dropped off the internet.

So where have they gone? Have they gone on to bigger and better things? We need to know!

I posted a long time ago about working on various versions of SQL Server in the space of one week. My work over the last few weeks has been a bit of a change and I have been working for customers at their locations in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Different customers, I hasten to add. The first two weeks were an interesting time helping an Edinburgh company witht the performance of their SQL Server database. It was one of those good jobs where you get to really prove the techniques that you know about. That was interesting as well being a web architected application with Microsoft SQL Server at the backend of things, but with J2EE running on windows servers running everything else.

I have followed that up with some time spent in Glasgow helping to upgrade a business application. I’m not going to go into the technologies too much, but it is an application that has run in a similar form for a number of years. It goes to show that an application can run for years if the core business analysis is correct and comprehensive. Having just read over that I would probably add that it also needs a good bit of stability in the underlying business. Some areas of the Financial Sector have business processes that have remained pretty constant over the years, and applications serving these can live for a long time too. Do some good analysis, listen to your users and implement a stable solution and it will hang around! All we have to do now is figure out how to establish a regular revenue stream 😉

I’m heading off to another customer later on to do some maintenance on another “mature” application. Both prove to me that whatever you do you have to have a stable application that helps people to do their jobs. Then you can decide how “usable” or attractive it looks. Proper usability will help all different kinds of users to do their job in the most efficient way possible, but there is a threshold that can be passed where IT goes a bit far and bells and whistles take over. But deliver an application that doesn’t work, doesn’t do the job, or is unstable and you will have lots of upset.

It has been a while since my last post, these things are very much of the moment for me and frankly I have to be in the right mood to spout forth – I reckon MartinS must have the personality to blog away all that he does – I take my hat off to him.

On the work front I have been out for a couple of weeks doing some onsite consultancy on Microsoft SQL Server 2000. It has been a real confirmation to me of the real value of proper indexing in giving SQL Server the best opportunity to do its stuff with query plans. Indexes, especially covering indexes used in joins, really boost the response and I saw some massive improvements in performance. Even as a basic rule, make sure the primary keys are there and all the foreign keys carry appropriate indexes too.

I am quite excited at a new objective placed on me at work, amongst other things I have been given a .NET development exam to do before the end of November. I would like to clear SQL Server admin away and will do so, but then on to .NET!

MartinS has just passed 70-316 to get his MCSD.NET “premier” certification and congratulations to him!

He reiterates a point made many times by MCP exam takers that there is a definate Microsoft way of things. Many of these exams present answers in a multiple choice format and when given the option between the way you would do things, and the “proper microsoft” way of doing things, you have to defer to the latter.

I’m not surprised, computer based testing has to degrade to one answer in the end so in the absence of a written exam format I’m happy to forfeit the opportunity for debate to get a pass or fail immediately at the end of my exam. Apparently PRINCE2 practitioners have to wait over 2 weeks to get the results of their test – ouch.