I tuned into the Third Thursday sessions for November and wanted to try boiling down the talks to what I thought were the most important takeaways.

The first was from Pete Harris about new SQL Server 2012 courses from Microsoft. Here are the highlights:

• Five courses have been funded and two more are planned for.
• All courses will now be 5 days, including the Writing Transact-SQL course (the old 2778 course).
• There will be a new SQL Server 2012 certification exam for writing Transact SQL, 70-461.
• The BI courses will no longer be structured around the three tools: SSRS, SSAS, and SSIS. Rather, the three courses were combined into two and there is overlapping usage of the tools in both.
• No SQL Azure specific courses coming. SQL Azure content was sprinkled throughout the courseware where deemed appropriate.
• We will now have to recertify after 3 years.

“What's next for Certification” presented by Krista Wall was not SQL specific but some interesting tidbits for SQL and BI came through anyway. Unfortunately some of the talk was for “MCT eyes only” and I can’t share yet but I’ll give you a small hint. Microsoft is trying to do with their certifications again what they attempted to do around five years ago.

That’s all for now. Tune in next time. Now that SQL 2012 RC is out I think I’ll start a new blog series: Learning SQL 2012 one beer at a time.