Result: Passed first time

Exam overview:  61 questions, 730 to pass, 90 minutes

This exam will definitely challenge your knowledge of administration tasks within SQL Server. For those who perform all of their administration using Enterprise Manager, you'll need to get out ISQL and learn how to perform all of your administration tasks at a command line level. All the commands you'll be asked to perform and verify will be using the command line syntax. If you do not know the command line syntax for the commands to perform administrative functions, do not even attempt to take this exam.

You will find numerous resources and links out on the web.  A lot of these sites offer study guides, technology backgrounders, exam tips and pointers, and numerous links to other sites.  Some of the best I've been at can be found on my certification resources page.

In addition to the resources noted above, I also used the BrainDump Heaven web site for final preparation.  (If you want this link, you will have to send me an e-mail as I will not post it out here due to the highly sensitive topics of exam security and the NDA.   Also, please do not ask for this link until you have completed preparations for the exam and are looking for one final resource.  I will not be a party to using this site as the sole means for studying as that defeats the purpose of learning this material.)

Within this exam, you can also expect to find approximately five questions that are essentially hit and miss. These five questions present scenarios with answers that are highly subjective. You'll be presented with a situation, a solution to that situation, and be asked to determine the validity of the solution. Where this becomes highly subjective is with the choice of responses. You'll see answers like:
A. The solution meets the object and is an outstanding solution.
B. The solution meets the objective and is an adequate solution.
C. The solution does not work though it appears to.
D. The solution meets the requirements but does not work.
E. The solution does not meet the requirements and does not work.

Topics For The Exam

Enforcing referential integrity
The different methods referential integrity can be defined within the database are either via triggers or foreign key constraints. You'll need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and in which situations you can not use declarative referential integrity.

DBCC commands
For this section make sure that you know and understand all of the DBCC commands. However, Microsoft did not waste it's time putting in commands such as checktable, checkdb, newalloc, or checkalloc. You'll need to  understand the syntax of some of be other DBCC commands that are available such as, memory usage, performance, statistics, and input buffer.

Update statistics
The update statistics section is relatively straightforward. You simply need to know the syntax for the update statistics command and also how update statistics affects the performance of your server.

Extended stored procedures
The extended stored procedures questions will test your knowledge of syntax for the common set of commands such as trace, mail, and xp_cmdshell. You'll also need to know which login has the authority to add and remove extended stored procedures.

Configuration options
Within this section you'll need to identify the minimum, maximum, and default configuration options.

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