I signed up for the SS2K8 beta exam, the maintenance and implementation one, and had it scheduled for this morning. I didn't really prepare or study at all, counting on the limited work with CTPs and Betas, as well as reading articles to help me out.

The beta format is 70 questions, 3 hours, and then a 30 minute comment period. As with most other exams, it took me about an hour, with about 25 minutes for comments, since I like to give feedback on the exam.

The exam wasn't too bad, definitely a few things I wasn't aware of with spatial indexes and monitoring performance. I took issue with a few questions that I thought were poorly worded, not giving enought detail, and a few others that were looking for paths to files. Why ask about paths? Those are silly memorization questions that don't require skills.

There were some good questions as well, some that made you think, especially with backup and recovery scenarios and I gave positive comments on those.

I was surprised by a few things, like the Extended Checks for DBCC, and the Resource Governer questions, and came home to look things up.

However I'm a little concerned about the exam process. This is the first time I've taken a beta exam before the product was released. I think that's a mistake as there are bound to be problems and issues identified in the first few months that will be fixed in SP1 (at RTM + 6 months) and should be incorporated into the exam. Also, the exam writers are people like me and I'm not sure I could devise a good exam without spending more time with the product.