July 10, 2007 at 8:25 am
Wohoo! Just passed the 70-431 exam. Now that I have passed I can advise on what I believe is required. Note im not giving away any specifics here, just general guidelines.
1. Buy SQL Sever 2005 Developer. its not expensive. You will use it again and again and again. And again and again!
2. Buy a book. The microsoft books give you a no nonense insight into what the exam contains. its not that expensive, and the cd that comes with it gives you practice tests, and a pdf version of the book( useful if you want to study whenever you get a few free minutes at work!).
3. Do practice tests. A lot of this exam is understanding the question format. Questions that try to trick you rather than test your knowledge. The more expirience you get at these questions, the better you will know what is looked for. I used Selftest online, the selftest that came with my book, and measure up. I hear trancender is great and I might try it for my next exam.
4. Do examples. A large section of the exam is the simulations. these can be anything from dealing with permissions, doing backups, , manipulating database objects like UDF's, Triggers etc. The better you know what to do here, the quicker you will get this section done. Note, even though there are many ways to do some tasks the simulations are quite restrictive and want you to perform the tasks a specific way.
5. Dont use Brain dumps. Many of them provide incorrect answers to the questions, and no explinations as to why the answer was correct or incorrect. I find when doing tests, even if I get a question wrong, if I read why I got it wrong, I understand it much better afterwards.
6. Designate yourself a timeframe. If you dont, you will keep putting it off and you will have forgotten stuff you learned in the beginning ( if your not using it everyday).
Im not saying my way is the best way, but its what got me through the exam. Best of luck all.
July 14, 2007 at 8:13 am
I passed my 70-431 exam as well and could not agree more with the information you have given. I can also recommend the exam cram book for this exam as it covers everything you need.
July 14, 2007 at 8:58 am
John, is Exam Cram the only book you used?? It doesn't seem to cover all of the published exam objectives. I just might be ready, if that's all you really need to know.
July 14, 2007 at 10:15 am
The only other thing i used was measureUp, that was purely just question and answers with explanations which was useful as well. The only thing the Exam Cram book didnt cover was the scenario based questions, but as i use SQL 2005 every day most of them were fairly basic to me.
Anything i didnt fully understand in the book, or felt like there was more to know i either searched BOL or newsgroups to find a more detailed explanation.
July 15, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Good advice given and I'll way that while I passed, I didn't use any books. Of course I did a lot of work using SQL 2005 while writing about it for the site and other books, but nothing specific to this exam. I actually signed up strictly to test the exam insurance offer.
I will say that I thought this was harder than the 441, 443, or 444 exams.
December 25, 2007 at 11:52 pm
hi all
i know that am little bit late but i need to know how many questions in the test and in how much time did they gave u to answer the questions.
cos am about to do the test and i need to know how fast should i be.
..>>..
MobashA
December 27, 2007 at 12:20 am
About 3 hours, if I recall, and the number of questions varies. You get a timer at the top of the screen.
Work carefully and steadily. If you know the material you should be fine.
Don't spend lots of time on any single question. If you don't know, mark the question and carry on. You can always go back to questions that you've marked at the end.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
December 27, 2007 at 8:58 am
You mention the books which ones did you mean.
Buy a book. The microsoft books give you a no nonense insight into what the exam contains. its not that expensive, and the cd that comes with it gives you practice tests, and a pdf version of the book( useful if you want to study whenever you get a few free minutes at work!).
Thanks
December 28, 2007 at 6:18 am
three hours?
its along time, then it must be alot of questions.
is it more than 50 question or what.
any way am studying microsoft self pased training kit, all in all its good.
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MobashA
December 28, 2007 at 7:19 am
The book I used was SQL Server 2005 Implementation and Maintenace by Microsoft Press. It touched on all of the required exam topics, and included a large section on XML - which happened to be one of my weak areas. If you only use one book to study for 431, this should be the one.
Tim Mitchell, Microsoft Data Platform MVP
Data Warehouse and ETL Consultant
TimMitchell.net | @Tim_Mitchell | Tyleris.com
ETL Best Practices
December 28, 2007 at 7:59 am
mobasha (12/28/2007)
three hours?its along time, then it must be alot of questions.
is it more than 50 question or what.
Don't remember. I wasn't counting.
They do give you a fair amount of time. I think the longest I took for any of my exams was hour and a half (and that was on one with a 4 hour time limit)
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
December 28, 2007 at 9:28 am
If I remember right, it was about 35-37 questions, multiple choice and then 10-15 simulations.
December 28, 2007 at 12:45 pm
this is exactly wat i was looking for.
thanks alot
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MobashA
January 10, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Winston Smith,
I wont be able to comment on other suggestions of yours as i have not taken exam yet. However of your following suggestion
"6. Designate yourself a timeframe. If you dont, you will keep putting it off and you will have forgotten stuff you learned in the beginning ( if your not using it everyday). "
I can strongly agree with you. I have been thru this many times. I don't use sql server everyday. I preapre for 15-20 days and one fine day some problem comes up(personal life) , i blow up the problem and forget about the exam. By the time i realise i need to get back to exam, i would have forgotten a lot of stuff.:(
I know unless i get the determination it won't be possible. Can anyone give tips for memebers who don't use sql server everyday but would like to pass 431 ?.
Greatly apprecite any suggestions...
Thanks
January 11, 2008 at 2:27 am
Im afraid IMO you need to try to use SQL server as much as possible. the exam is tailored that way. The last 15 question on the exam are practical questions where you have to use the SSMS ( albeit a fake version purely for test purposes) to solve various problems such as delete constraints, check job status etc.
If you dont use sql server daily in your work, then at the very least, make time to sit down with sql server and do the exercises at the end of each section in each chapter.
You dont need a huge amount of SSMS expirience if you have studied carefully and done all the examples, and played around yourself a bit, but you must have some expirience with it.
So to re-itterate, do the case studies and practices at the end of each section and chapter, making sure you understand what you are doing before leaving it for the evening.
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