Category: Microsoft Certified Master (MCM)

A few weeks ago, Microsoft unveiled changes to the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) of SQL Server program and showed off new free video training materials by SQLskills.  I was curious to hear what the community would think about the new certification and our training materials. Jason Strate (Blog - @StrateSQL) was the first to blog…

Quest: "Brent, here's a top-of-the-line Apple iPad 3G, case, camera kit, dock, and all the trimmings."

Me: "What?  Why?"

The Microsoft Certified Masters program doesn't run itself.  David Ikeda and Joe Sack manage the monster, and I'd like to take a minute to thank them for everything they do.

Someone's gotta review the applicants. Not everybody gets accepted into the program.  Some candidates don't have the necessary experience, and some are just looking for a shortcut to a big paycheck.  All it takes is one underqualified candidate, and the class gets seriously sidetracked by questions.  Keeping the bar high helps improve the Master-level training.

If the DBA answer is always, "It depends," how can Microsoft test DBAs? Every week of the MCM program, attendees take a multiple-choice test. Afterwards, we gathered in the hallways and vigorously debated our answers. We agreed about most of the questions, but we had loud discussions about the pros and cons of a dozen…

The MCM isn't perfect. The instructors and David Ikeda (the lead for this rotation) are trying hard to make the experience great, but there's some areas for improvement. I've been holding back from discussing them until I'd seen all of the instructors; I didn't want to post a complaint and have people connect that complaint…

There's something really exciting about walking into Microsoft each morning.  I know it sounds cheesy, but I get the feeling that really cool things are happening all over the campus.  Love 'em or hate 'em, Microsoft builds things that touch our everyday lives, and this is where it's happening.  I know a lot of Microsoft employees that I really, really respect for their knowledge, community efforts, and personalities.

The MCM schedule goes like this:

Week 1 - M-F - training
Week 1 - Weekend - study time
Week 2 - Monday 8am - written exam covering Week 1's material
Week 2 - M-F - training
Week 2 - Weekend - study time
Week 3 - Monday 8am - written exam covering Week 2's material (today)
Week 3 - M-F - training
Week 3 - Saturday 8am - written exam covering Week 3's material
Week 3 - Saturday 10am-4pm - 6-hour lab exam covering all the material

I'm more than halfway through my big adventure. Candidates are starting to complain about the lack of sleep and the abundance of material.  So far this week, we've covered the following material:

537 PowerPoint slides (and these aren't Brent-style slides, either - one of the slides yesterday scored 15 bullet points)
43 T-SQL scripts
11 Visual Studio apps
164 more slides of "testable material" that weren't shown

I'm kinda good at a few things.  I can tune pretty much any SQL Server to make it run faster.  I play a decent game of Extreme Query Makeover.  If you talk about your SQL Server application behavior for a few minutes, I can usually tell you where your bottleneck is.  I've even been known…

I sit at the back of the classroom, so I get to see everybody's laptops as they're working.  Some folks surf the web, make travel plans, or do email.  Other folks follow along with the demos, running the scripts on their machines before the instructor gets to the next one.  I seem to have a little bit of an oddball strategy, so I figured maybe I should blog it in case it helps anybody else.

Here's everything you need to know to pass the MCM written exams:

Before you get here, read the prerequisites.

Whew.

The first week was taught by Paul Randal (Blog - @PaulRandal) and Kimberly Tripp (Blog - @KimberlyLTripp), the husband-and-wife team of former Microsofties who founded SQLSkills.com.  To call them good trainers is an epic understatement.  They know how to deliver very, very technical material in ways that illustrate it well.  I had to stop Paul at one point and ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so good at conveying a hard-to-describe process.

I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons growing up, and part of the game involves building your character.  You picked a class like thief, cleric, fighter, and so on, and your choice determined the strengths and weaknesses of your character.  Your character's Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, and Intelligence scores were affected by your class. …

One of the classic lines from the movie Fight Club is:
"The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!"
Tom LaRock (Blog - @SQLRockstar) used this line (and many others) to explain what happens at the MVP Summit, and I had to come back to it after my experience yesterday at the Microsoft Certified Master training.

I know kung fu.

Okay, maybe not, but day one of my Microsoft Certified Master training for SQL Server was pretty darned cool. I arrived to find my name on a spot in the classroom, plus my very own swag! We got:

Tomorrow is the first day of school. I wasn't all that fond of school, if I'm honest.  My most vivid recollection of high school is that I constantly forgot my locker combination.  I kept having to go to the office for them to remind me, and it got so bad that the secretary knew my…

By now I've told you pretty much everything I know about the Microsoft Certified Master program, and I'm curious to hear your feedback.  How would you change the SQL MCM program?

Most of the complaints I've heard have boiled down to:

As one of the bloggers behind The Master Blog, Joe Sack is a public face for the SQL MCM program.  Joe also blogs at MSDN, and he manages the SQL MCM prerequisite reading list.  The MCM program isn't even his "day job" - he's also a Senior Premier Field Engineer, which means he sees a lot of high-end SQL Server challenges.  I emailed Joe to ask him a few questions about the program.