If you haven’t seen Charlie Sheen’s cinematic triumph Hot Shot’s Part Deux, you’re missing out, which is why I made sure to include the link for it. If you have seen the movie you will wonder how it missed out on an Oscar nomination, or maybe better understand why it is on cable non-stop in reruns. It was also the first thing that came to mind when I thought about Part Deux. So having taken the first exam 70-461, without the book, I felt compelled to go out and get the Official Microsoft Press study book for 70-462 . This was the first book made available for any of the SQL Server MCSA Exams. Yea! That will make studying for the test so much easier, right? No. Wrong. Dead wrong.

So about the book.

If all you do is follow it, make sure you check out this web site http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-us/second-shot.aspx as you will be doing a Part Deux yourself. This exam covers the administration part of the exam. This is the exam that DBAs should be more familiar with, although I doubt in your environment that they have set up every form of replication and high availability option in SQL Server 2012, so I bet you will have to study too. I set up a server and thumped around the exercises. It wasn’t enough. The book does offer a coupon in the back for a discount on the exam cost as well as practice exams. After I failed the practice exams, I thought hmm this isn’t working. I went back to what I did on the last exam, after all I passed that one. Here is everything you need to know to pass the 70-462 exam. What I did was made a word document out of all the material it said you needed to know by copying things off of MSDN and books online. I made two documents, after all this is part two, and it got sorta long and I didn’t want to blow up Word.

After making sure that I could really do the stuff listed that I didn’t have a chance to mess with when I played DBA, I drove my rolling purse over to the testing center and took the exam. I brought my running watch which has a handy stopwatch which is also fun to set when standing in TSA lines in the airport to see how much of your time is really being wasted. You should try that sometime as generally you will be surprised that it seems like you are spending a lot more time in line than you actually are. The test was like that, as it seemed like it was taking forever but I actually had more time than I needed. I had 30 minutes to spare so I could go get ice cream before I had to be at my next appointment.

Yours Always

Ginger Grant

Data aficionado et SQL Raconteur