Microsoft Streamlines Technical Certifications

Microsoft has announced a streamlining of certifications.

The Born to Learn site contains the full details,

The five new expert certifications are:

• MCSE: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure - focusing on skills validation for Windows Server and Microsoft Azure

• MCSE: Mobility - focusing on skills validation for Windows Client and Enterprise Mobility Suite

• MCSE: Data Management and Analysis - focusing on skills validation for both on-premises and cloud-based Microsoft data products and services

• MCSE: Productivity - focusing on skills validation for Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, and Skype for Business

• MCSD: App Builder - focusing on skills validation for Web and Mobile app development

To earn each of these credentials, you must first earn a qualifying Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) certification and, then, pass a single additional exam from a list of electives associated with the corresponding Center of Excellence.   

Every year, you need to take an additional exam from the list of electives, demonstrating your investment in broadening or deepening your skills in a given Center of Excellence to retain the certification.  Each time you earn the certification, a new certification entry will be added to your transcript. 

Thesis Submission

After 6 years working on my part time PhD entitled A Study into Best Practices and Procedures used in the Management of Database Systems, it is complete. I wrote about 95,400 words.















The final package was posted for examination.

DocumentDB Tools

There is a useful cheat sheet to help with writing DocumentDB queries. This can be downloaded here

Estimate Request Units and Data Storage
https://www.documentdb.com/capacityplanner

Query Playground converts T-SQL Syntax to JSON
https://www.documentdb.com/sql/demo

OpenMinds 2016 Database Research

The 'Get Animated about Research' article shares details about my research with the kind help of my friend Andrew Fryer. The article on page 10-12 is in the annual OpenMinds 2016 magazine dubbed 'the journal for enquiring minds', The Open University alumni publication.

Document Database Comparisions

Azure DocumentDB is a NoSQL database that leverages a write-optimised, latch-free database engine service for highly available and globally distributed apps.








An interesting comparison of DocumentDB offerings.

Database Lifecycle Management

This survey report released discusses the expertise required for managing data complexity. The findings identify the need for database expertise to manage this challenging environment.

Systems Thinking can help Database Management

A different way to think about managing database systems is using systems thinking. A fun animation about systems thinking and evaluation.