Pass 70-464 MCSE Certification Exam Fast

70-464 Exam Has Been Retired

This exam has been replaced by Microsoft with new exam.

Microsoft 70-464 Exam Details

The Microsoft 70-464 exam is about building databases with Microsoft SQL Server and implementing them in organizations. This is to ensure data availability at all times.

Target Audience

This test is put forward for database specialists concerned with building solutions to be implemented in businesses. Their tasks include creating files for database, tables, data and types, planning, creation alongside optimization of indexes, and ensuring data integrity. The intention to sit for exam 70-464 is to acquire the expert-level MCSE: Data Management and Analytics certification.

Prerequisites

Ahead of reaching out for the final exam, any of these certifications ought to have been realized:

• the MCSA: SQL Server 2012/2014;
• the MCSA: SQL 2016 BI Development;
• the MCSA: SQL 2016 Database Development;
• the MCSA: BI Reporting;
• the MCSA: SQL 2016 Database Administration.

Details for Microsoft 70-464 Exam

The MCSE 70-464 test is about covering 40-60 questions in a span of 2.5 hours. It’s inclusive of MCQs as well as styles like best answer, build lists, drag-and-drop, review screen, mark review, and case studies. The testing cost is $165 for those in the US and as you look forward to sitting for it, remember to strive for not less than 700 out of the 1000 points. Since 70-464 is slated for expiry of 31st January 2021, a new test will be announced then.

Topics Covered by This Test

These tested areas bring out the intention of 70-464 in its entirety:

• Implementing Database Objects;
• Putting into Operation Programming Objects;
• Designing Database Objects;
• Optimizing and Troubleshooting Queries.

When reviewing the first domain, candidates start with the creation and altering of tables. They obtain familiarity with developing an optimal strategy for utilizing temporary objects such as table variables & temporary tables, defining options to triggers, defining version control & management of data, implementing #table and @Table appropriately, creating calculated columns, implementing partitioned tables, functions, and schemas, and constructing column collation, among others. Next to touch is outlining, building, and troubleshooting security facets. It details language statements for data control, troubleshooting connection issues, statements, certificate-based security, loginless users, database permissions and roles, contained users, schema security, etc. It’s followed by creating the locking level for granularity, which looks at lock mechanisms, handling deadlocks, properties for index locking, lock & blocking issues, deadlock scenarios, lock contention, concurrency control, and others. Another area to get familiar with is putting into practice various data types. This regards data types like BLOBS, XML, spatial data, and GUIDs, Common Language Runtime (CLR), and the usage of #table and @Table alongside implicit & explicit conversions. Constituting as well as transforming constraints is something else to look at. It explains creating constraints, defining table ones, modifying constraints depending on performance, implementing cascading deletes, and configuring constraints aimed at bulk inserts.

The next topic covering the Implementation of Programming Objects scrutinizes the following:

• Making and utilizing different stored procedures

  This area focuses on stored procedures & other programmatic objects, varied stored procedure results types, analyzing and rewriting processes & procedures, programming stored procedures, implementing procedures, and more.

• Outlining T-SQL scalar & table-valued features

  It includes modifying scripts that utilize loops along with cursors into SET-based operations and designing deterministic as well as non-deterministic functions.

• Building, utilizing and changing user-defined functions known as UDFs

  This scope is about implementing deterministic/non-deterministic functions, CROSS APPLY through UDFs, and CLR functions.

• Making various altering views

  Tasks detailed here look into setting up and configuring partitioned tables alongside partitioned views and creating indexed views.

The domain about Designing Database Objects delves into the following:

• Creating tables

  Knowledge areas included here are design patterns for data, normalized & denormalized SQL tables, transactions, views, appropriately implementing GUID as a clustered index, temp tables, encryption strategy, table partitioning, and BLOB storage.

• Constructing for concurrency traits

  It scrutinizes maximizing concurrency, locking & concurrency strategy, a strategy for transaction isolation, and triggers for concurrency.

• Describing indexes

  It’s about integrity policy for table data that includes checks, foreign key, primary key, XML schema, nullability, and uniqueness.

• Building both implicit & explicit transactions

  This area captures managing transactions, data integrity, distributed transaction escalations, designing savepoints, and error handling aimed at transactions and includes TRY, THROW, and CATCH.

The final segment concerning Optimizing and Solving Issues with Queries looks at the following:

• Advancing as well as tuning different queries

  Items captured here include tuning poorly performing queries, which includes avoiding unnecessary conversions of data types, identifying long-running queries, reviewing and optimizing codes, analyzing plans for executing & optimizing queries and tuning queries with the use of execution plans & Microsoft Database Tuning Advisor (DTA). Other tested fields are optimizing queries with the use of pivots & common table expressions (CTE), designing database layout for optimizing queries, implementing query hints, tuning query workloads, implementing recursive CTE, implementing full text & semantic search, analyzing execution plans, and implementing plan guidelines.

• Troubleshooting and resolving performance problems

  Here, you’ll need to know how to deal with interpreting performance monitor data and integrating performance monitor data with SQL Traces.

• Optimizing indexes

  This sector revolves around developing an optimal strategy aimed at clustered indexes, analyzing index usage, optimizing indexes for workloads, which includes data warehousing & OLTP, generating proper indexes & statistics with the use of INCLUDE columns, creating and filtering indexes, implementing full-text indexing in addition to columnstore ones, and optimizing maintenance for online indexes.

• Capturing plans created for execution and analysis

  Such an area involves collecting and reading execution plans, creating an index based on the execution plan, batching or splitting implicit transactions, splitting large queries, consolidating smaller ones, and reviewing and optimizing parallel plans.

• Collecting system and performance information

  Within this domain, you’ll get exposed to performance monitoring through the usage of Dynamic Management Views, collecting output from Database Engine Tuning Advisor, reviewing and interpreting Extended Event Logs, designing Extended Event Sessions, and monitoring OLTP resources for In-Memory.

Career Prospects, Job Positions, and Salary

As an increasing number of companies see the value in data analytics, anyone with the potential of applying for and getting a job in this field will be a great asset to their team or company. Passing the Microsoft 70-464 and getting certified in Data Management and Analytics bring immense value to your career. Overall, your skillset will be valuable in roles such as a data analyst, data engineer, data security analyst, data management analyst, data scientist, and database designer. The pay for someone with the MCSE certificate in such roles reaches around $98k in one year according to what ZipRecruiter.com says.

Next Step after MCSE

When in the possession of the MCSE: Data Management and Analytics, your skills are considered top-notch but you can still diversify them by looking at a variety of other certifications from the various IT vendors like Oracle or Cisco based on what plans you have in place for your career.