SQL Server Certification

The reason I started this blog is to document my journey in becoming a SQL Server certified professional.  I've been studying for about a month now and have learned a lot.  I found a couple of really good articles about what to study for here and here.  On the second one I have been going through the thorough list he gave and looking up articles about them one by one.  Here are a few things I have learned and the articles I found about the subject.

• Tables and Views
• Partitioned Tables
• I currently work with a small instance of SQL Server where I don't really need to partition the tables but it was interesting to read about this.
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345146%28v=sql.90%29.aspx
• Programming Objects
• Table Valued Parameter
• I currently use SQL Server 2005 at my work so this is not available to me, but I can't count the number of times I could of used this.
• http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2008/08/31/sql-server-table-valued-parameters-in-sql-server-2008/
• Quick note: I have used Pinal Dave's blog a lot.  I would highly recommend his writings if you are stuck on a problem.  He does a very good job of not only explaining the topic so it's easy to understand but also what's under the covers as well.
• Query Fundamentals
• OUTPUT Clause
• I don't delete that often in stored procs, but this would be nice to use when you need to know the info you just took out.
• http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2007/10/01/sql-server-2005-output-clause-example-and-explanation-with-insert-update-delete/
• Additional Query Techniques
• RANK, DENSE RANK, ROW_NUMBER, & NTILE
• I had use RANK a hand full of times but didn't realize how far the rabbit hole went with these other functions as well.  These are really useful to me in my everyday work now.
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189798.aspx
• Other SQL Components
• Full Text Search
• I thought this was really neat and would help to not use Like statements.  Two for this one on implementing it and on using the key words like CONTAINS.
• http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/Stored-procedures-Implement-full-text-search
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms142571%28v=sql.105%29.aspx
• XML Data
• XML Commands
• This is the part of the test I was really dreading because I don't use this at all, but after going over the articles about it, it doesn't seem to bad.  Here are a couple of ones for a basis about it.
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178107%28v=sql.105%29.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186918%28v=sql.105%29.aspx
• Gathering Perf Info
• Catalog Views
• I use these quite a bit but there are so many of them it's hard to get your head around them sometimes.  Here's an article to show you them all.
• http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1934/understanding-catalog-views-in-sql-server-2005-and-2008/

I'm hoping to pass the test by the end of the year because the 2008 tests expire in July 2013.  If you have any questions or comments let me know.  Next time I will post about a couple of the questions I can't quite figure out.