Back in March I created a spreadsheet to help me track my studying for the 70-762 Developing SQL Databases exam and posted about some of my resources. I plan on taking the 70-762 on Monday, 2018-07-23. I wanted to share my experiences studying for the exam prior to taking it and the methodology to my studying. After the test on Monday I plan on posting about how my exam went (within the rules of the NDA) and I plan on making a few posts later about why and who should become certified.
I spent considerably more effort studying for this exam than I did the 70-761 exam. I focused very heavily at the end of my studying for the 761 exam on JSON and XML. This exam I spent extra time on In-Memory OLTP, Columnstore indexes, concurrency, and Azure. (All incredibly deep topics individually!)
What did that effort look like studying for the 762? You can see on my spreadsheet filled in here! I haven’t seen anyone detail how they studied and also exactly how much they studied, so I thought some folks may like to see what that looks like. The spreadsheet shows the day and what I studied, as well as the approximate time.
On average I spent about 1 hour reading every 36 pages out of the books. Sometimes the reading went faster or slower depending on the content in the books, but this was about the average time it took me to read. I was also following along in the reading by running and testing the examples as they came up.
I spent approximately 57.25 Hours reading, 12.75 hours watching videos, and 7.5 hours taking practice tests. I will probably spend another 5-10 hours watching videos, taking tests before taking my exam. I will have spent approximately overall: 77.5 hours – 87.5 hours studying.
My original optimistic guess was that I’d feel comfortable taking the test after 132 hours of studying and pessimistically guessing I’d need to spend 241 hours. (Obviously I was off with that estimation.) I was able to use some of my knowledge to apply my learning at work, so about 36 / 69 topics were review, the other 33 I had to focus more on in my free time. (Those topics are highlighted under Topics and Hours.) I added in the additional hours I spent looking into the topics that I understood less under Topics and Hours.
Out of all the books I read, I would say SQL Server Internals Pro was one of my favorites. The 70-762 training book had noticeable amounts of errors with the syntax, spelling, grammar, and formatting. The topics were right on track with the exam list and it served as a nice checklist to ensure I hit everything. If you are going to get the 70-762 study guide, I’d recommend the e-book if you are alright with that option. I can appreciate that it’s a little silly to reinvent the wheel on each topic and there are some fantastic resources linked in that book. I would say there are probably 50 or more resources linked throughout however, so it may be cumbersome to try and type them all out. If you read everything that was linked in addition to that book, I would assume it would get you close to passing the exam.
T-SQL Querying had a lot of great information, especially on the indexes. Between the T-SQL Querying and Internals Pro books, I would say you’d get a fantastic base for understanding the indexes. You will definitely want to implement real world practice with indexes to truly understand them. You can simulate them in a practice environment, but really applying that knowledge to your job helps the information stick.
Two other resources I found to be helpful were the Brent Ozar videos on indexes and the Measureup Practice test 70-762. The Ozar videos are unfortunately very expensive, you can get the same level of understanding from Internals Pro + T-SQL Querying + several PASS videos. But if you do happen to have access to their videos, the index series was fantastic and it really helped my understanding of that topic.
The Measureup test showed where I was proficient and awful. The first time taking it, I didn’t read the directions very carefully and I accidentally didn’t answer about 10 questions. The second time I got 36 / 50 correctly. I focused on the pieces I found the most challenging in the practice exam as you will see in the Planner. I decided to retake the practice test once more, but this time I wanted to really test myself. I set the mode to 153 questions and did all of them in a row. It took about 5 hours to do that in one sitting as I was having problems focusing after the first 60 questions. I found five questions had issues; one had two duplicate answers, another had an incorrect explanation in the answer section, and the other three had spelling mistakes. I submitted a ticket for each question to customer service where they told me they’d review the problems and probably patch them in the next cycle. I scored a 73.2% overall on the practice exam and here was my topic score breakdown:
Design / Implement database objects – 77.59%
Implement programmability objects – 94.44%
Manage database concurrency – 71.43%
Optimize database objects and SQL infrastructure – 59.52%
I was feeling a little nervous so that’s why I bought the test exam, I wanted to see where I was with some way to measure my progress. I wish I could say it was a confidence booster, but honestly it has me a little more nervous than previously. My thought process behind buying it was that the practice exam was only about $100 more. If I pass the exam, I would only be out $100 instead of $160. Of course, there is still some risk I may not pass, but I think the test exam showed where I’m not proficient enough so I can continue learning in those areas. What really made me jump on the practice exam though was that I found a deal! I won’t go too far into it on my post; but I purchased the practice test, exam voucher, and two free retakes for the price of taking the exam and the practice test.
I’ve since then completed reading Kalen Delaney’s book SQL Server Concurrency, tried out Kendra Little’s quizzes that are related to topics on the real exam, and reviewed parts of Internals Pro / and the 762 guide.
Come Monday we’ll see if my studying combined with experience pans out!