End of the "Road to DataStage Certification" D

 I feel very happy at the end of my journey :D (So, unfortunate thatthere are no emoticons in blogger ;) ). I finally("finally", because Ihave been planning to take this for a long time now) cleared myDatastage Certification. There are a few things which give you the joycomparable to getting your certification. I want to thank my friendsAjay Prakash and SubhaKarthik for giving me the moral support for thiscertification.

I had blogged (Road to Datastage Certification) about how all this certification stuff started. I had planned to take the certification on 26thof this month. I applied for a leave on this day, to buy myself time toread the documentation for my certification. Booked the test at 5:30 PMin the evening by taking a cue from Vincent'sexperience with the exam. I started the day well by getting up at 6:30AM and jogging for some distance. I was preparing happily when this guyfrom the prometric center calls me up at around 2:00 PM and says that Iwon't be able to take my certification because of some problem withtheir server (From when did Prometric centers start having servers oftheir own :?, I thought it might have been a problem with theirinternet connection). He asked me to call him up before I started tothe exam center, in case the server issue gets fixed. I was verydisappointed on hearing this, as I was highly pumped up to take theexam. Anyway, I kept reading the documentation, and trying out thingson my VM. At around 5:10 PM I called up that guy, and got a happy replyfrom him saying that the server was up. I quickly went through theimportant notes I had jotted down during preparation (No matter howmuch preparation you do, you will never be "satisfied" with yourpreparation ;) ). I got on my bicycle in my tracks and a T-shirt andgot off to the certification center. I reached the center by 5:25 PM(It's about 250 yards from my home) and, by the time I got in front ofthe computer to take the test, it was 5:38 PM. I finished the exam inabout an hour and reviewed all the answers in the next 15minutes(finished 30 minutes before the end time). I clicked on the Endbutton with my adrenaline on an all time high!! I was on Cloud number"99" when I saw that I passed the exam with a good score. I thank Godfor this, and happily come out of the exam

As for the exam, Itwas a moderately tough exam, It had 79 questions most of which hadmultiple answers. There were also a few questions which ask you to dragand drop the right boxes in the options given (I was impressed ;) ). Inall, if you prepare well and have some good experience in developingParallel jobs, debugging jobs and administering Datastage, the examshouldn't be very difficult. If you don't do all that, don't panic, gothrough the documentation which comes with the Datastage client, thatshould help you out with things you don't do.

This was the split up of questions in the exam:

Section/Category Number of Items

1. Installation and Configuration 6 out of 79
2. Metadata 4 out of 79
3. Persistent storage 10 out of 79
4. ParallelArchitecture 10 out of 79
5. Databases 9 out of 79
6. Data Transformation 11 out of 79
7. Combining and Sorting Data 8 out of 79
8. Automation and Production Deployment 7 out of 79
9. Monitor and Troubleshoot 7 out of 79
10. Job Design 7 out of 79

1. Gothrough the installation and configuration guide, Especially theconfiguration on a Unix machine and the configuration of EnterpriseEdition on USS. There were a few questions about the Unix Kernelsettings, so don't ignore them.
2. Metadata would be an easysection, Read about different types of datatypes in Datastage, ways toimport metadata. Also know about different OSH datatypes.
3. PersistentStorage is a section which asks questions about Datasets and Filesets.This should be another easy section if you have played around withDatasets. Know how data is stored in these two files
   
4. ParallelArchitecture is a huge thing and you should read the Parallel jobdeveloper's guide and the Parallel job Advanced developer's guide toscore in this section. There was a question about conductor nodes,section leaders and players, which was taken straight out of theParallel job developer's guide.
5. This is one section whichconsumed a lot of my time for preparation, I have just used Oracle asthe database in my Datastage jobs. But this is not enough, you aresupposed to know "everything" about Oracle, DB2 and Teradata (Thesewere the only databases on which I got questions). Read through thecomplete documentation for these stages, and don't forget theenvironment variables which effect these stages.
6. DataTransformation is an easy stage if you have created even a few jobs inDatastage Parallel edition, This should be the section with which youare most familiar. Questions in this section can be answered with alittle preparation.
   
7. This section has a lot of questionsabout the sort stage, join, merge, lookup and aggregator stages. Makesure that you know all the environment variables which effect theperformance of these stages. Also go through the differences betweensimilar stages (such as the differences between Merge and Lookup).
8. Thisis an interesting section which covers Job Sequences (which are notdocumented in the Parallel Job Developer's guide!!) and stuff about thecommand line interface to Datastage. Know all the things possible withthe use of "dsjob" and similar commands.
9. This section had a lotof show and tell questions. It had a question which had an exhibit of ajob log and asked us to pick up the log which has the OSH code. Forthis section go through all the Environment variables present in theReporting category and know how each variable effects the job log.
10. The last section (Am I happy :D) , It has questions in which you are asked to optimize the design of a job.

Ona scale of 1-10 for toughness, I would say that this test stands at 8.5(I love fractions ;) ). It is tough in that it tests the breadth ofyour knowledge in Datastage.

I was a guy who didn't belive incertifications, I was of the idea that no certification can measureyour actual skill on a Tool, because with enough time and with "NO"practical experience, you can get a pretty decent score in anycertification. I guess I was wrong, These are a few benefits I didn'tknow about a Certification:

• You get a LOT OF CONFIDENCE whenyou are certified, it gives you a benchmark against which you cancompare yourself with the rest of the guys.
• More importantly,it fills a lot of gaps in your knowledge. I can't really list out thetechnical stuff I learnt during the preparation for my certification.This makes you a better developer however good you currently are.
• Itis a humbling experience (It was for me!). You get to see the thingswhich you don't know, It's like a reality check which is good to have.And it opens up possibilities for your jobs, You connect to theinquisitive child within you during the preparation.
• It gives you a very good break from the routine stuff which you do every day.
• Finally, it may get you a better job :D

If these things don't motivate you enough, then you got some serious problems ;)
Iwould encourage people to take certifications (doesn't matter whichcertification you take). Now, I will stop my lecture aboutcertifications and put down a few useful resources which helped me withmy certification.

Resources I used:

• The link to the topics to be covered for the certification, This is "THE MOST IMPORTANT" document which will help you with your certification
• IBM InfoSphere DataStage Data Flow and Job Design, a BEAutiful and much needed document for Datastage, (Thanks Vincent for blogging about it)
  
• Vincent's entry in ITtoolbox
• Vincents entry in Squidoo for certification (a very good one)
  
• Ray's set of sample questions
  
• FAQ from DSXchange
• http://datastagejobs.blogspot.com/2007/01/datastage-certification-study-guide.html
• http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/bi/websphere/archives/the-top-7-online-datastage-tutorials-15526
• Another set of good pages: http://etl-tools.info/en/datastage/datastage_tutorial.
• Vincent's experience with the certification

Please leave comments if you find this post helpful, or if this post "helped" you in wasting time ;)
That is all I have for now, Whew! Blogging is no easy thing!