# Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Just did my 71-647 (70-649 when it comes out of beta), without preparation... I just checked some links;

Permanent Link to 70-647 Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator

Erfahrungsbericht 71-647 (German)

In general, my impression is in line with what Lucas and Noxx experienced. In terms of subjects, my exam was quite a lot of GPO, File Server, Clustering in combination with SQL Server 2005 ;-), AD DS, AD CS, AD FS.

Should I have to take this exam again, there still is a little I would look at based on today's experience. The only subjects I would be looking for are:

  • Feature overview of System Center (and a bit more specific System Center Virtual Machine Manager and SoftGrid)
  • Windows System Resource Manager
  • AD; what's changed from Windows Server 2003 to 2008
  • AD FS

In general, being MCSE 2003, proper preparation for 70-649 and a bit of reading on the four topics above should be enough...

Oh, I added my remarks on 5 out of 71 questions that had some serious flaws or were just plain wrong.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008 4:12:30 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)
# Thursday, January 17, 2008

If you're going to take the SQL Server class 2779B, there is a lot of XML in it. That is, in relation to SQL Server 2005. But do you know your XML? Well, the training implies you do, though it is not one of the published prerequisites. If you're blank on XML, or want to check on your skills, you may want to take a look at www.w3schools.com.

The available tutorials give you an overview of the general usage of XML-technologies, some of them (XML, XPath, XQuery, XSD) will return in 2779 (Modules 3 and 6) where they are applied on SQL Server 2005. A little study-guide to prepare you for the things to come.

Thursday, January 17, 2008 6:40:39 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)
# Tuesday, January 15, 2008

A while back I wrote about Overridable IDENTITY or the order of things, offering a solution to store data in natural order. This solution worked form me in a couple of projects, until I recently had to reload a table... so the basic procedure would be to;

  • Create a new table based on the same definition
  • Do an INSERT new_table SELECT ... FROM old_table
  • DROP TABLE old_table
  • sp_rename 'new_table', 'old_table'

But this does not produce the proper result, as the most recent inserted identity prior to the insert will be applied for the default.

The trick is to make every insert an independent action, so the IDENTITY_CURRENT is properly set for every row; make it run in a cursor. Yeah, I know.... performance, but that pain is largely taken away by making it a FAST_FORWARD. Besides, if anyone has a better suggestion, I'm all ears. So instead of a INSERT ... SELECT, the CURSOR is opened for the selection and the new table is inserted based on the fetched rows.

Altogether in the attached script;

  • Create the soon to be table.
  • Populate the table.
  • Create the new table, pay attention to the default.
  • Use the cursor to fill the new table.
  • Drop the original table and rename the new table to the name of the original table, don't forget to recreate the default.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 9:53:29 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)
# Monday, January 14, 2008
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... or at least didn't feel things were important enough to post, at least that's the excuse for not writing here for well over a month.

In the mean time, beta-season is opened again and I registered for the 71-647. However, I won't go trough the same depth of preparation as I did for the 70-649... I'll just go in and try to make it on my Windows 2003 and 70-649 prep-knowledge ;-).

The other exam I registered for is the 70-445 and I'm planning to take the 70-446 later this year. Just to get myself started for the preparation of this exam, I collected some links to hold on to:

and I'll be using the Microsoft courseware for the courses 2791, 2792, 2793, 2794 and the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-445): Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Business Intelligence—Implementation and Maintenance.

That should keep me busy for a while again...

Monday, January 14, 2008 8:49:23 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)