Wow, a new years resolution I’m following through with! This year I’ve already passed 2 Microsoft Exams. The first exam was “Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012”, and some of the skills I learnt from studying for this exam has helped me write better scripts, 1 of which was posted yesterday. So I’m 1/3 of the way towards achieving the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) SQL Server Solutions Associate certification.

The second exam I passed is the “Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management”, which (along with the testing and TFS exams) is necessary for achieving the Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer Certification.

However I recently had my objectives set for the coming year at work, one of which being that I am to transfer my TFS/Build knowledge to members of the dev team and to focus fully on SQL/DBA,. And folks let me tell you something: I was pleased when I got the role and I’m ecstatic now I get to move away from TFS/Builds. This is because a well built TFS environment does not require too much admin day to day. Applying updates to TFS have always been a challenge to install, especially if you do not have a test TFS environment, but still they don’t even come along too often.

[caption id=“attachment_2160” align=“alignleft” width=“174”] Builds Under Construction[/caption]

However it was the ancillary tasks that began taking more time; I was writing more WiX, and more deployment and custom build tasks, some of which made some good blog posts.

And despite being asked to share the knowledge out to the team last year, which I attempted to do in the form of a wiki and walk-throughs, the knowledge was staying with me. And I knew this because no one ever updated the wiki but me, and eventually the wiki became known as “Richard’s Wiki”, which somewhat taxes the definition of what a wiki is supposed to be. And as the company has grown, to have the knowledge with one person as opposed to collectively carries a greater risk for the company.

The time split for SQL/TFS for me was always 80/20, but that number was rising in the favour of TFS, and a decision was made for me to relinquish these duties. So now “Richard’s Wiki” becomes the team wiki and I get to work exclusively again on SQL and SSAS. Which I’m more than happy with because it’s what I’ve always enjoyed doing and what I have the most interest in anyway. And this brings me back on rather nicely to the next 2 exams I need to take to complete my MCSA Certification, “Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases” and “Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft SQL Server 2012”. I spent a lot of time last year studying, and even have my own Hyper-V environment at home to run through the workshops, so a bit of revision will be required before I book them, hopefully by the end of the month. Wish me luck!