Microsoft changes BI Certifications
I was very happy when I saw Microsoft's new BI Certifications known as MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional) Business Intelligence some months ago. This certification was based on the “standard” MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) SQL Server which was a very generic exam covering all stuff a SQL Server offers.
Since I’m not really a good DBA I had a look at the requirements, had a look a the preparation guides and saw that this would mean quite some work for me since it covered many things I never was in touch with before (i.e. Service Broker, what are the correct parameters to run sqlcmd, ...).
Today a colleague told me that Microsoft changed these certifications yesterday. Before the new “version” of these exams you had to pass two additional exams to get an MCITP. They now changed one of the MCITP exams to the MCTS Business Intelligence (exam 70-445, no content announced, yet) which is a new requirement before starting the exam 70-446 (also no content announced, yet). The only information available is the trainings and books available (http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcitp/bid/default.mspx). Basically it seams that 70-446 is just getting more into details than 70-445 since the books you should study are quite the same as for 70-445.
So the good news is that you have the chance to get a BI certification by passing only one exam (getting MCTS by exam 70-445) and you need only one additional exam to get an MCITP (by exam 70-446). Unfortunately both exams will be only available in early 2007 so there’s plenty of time reading through all the books…
Thomas