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Has anyone used Transcender for 70-464? Was it good?
Hello... Just took, and failed by a wide margin, 70-464, having prepared for it -- for 25 years as a SQL developer, not a DBA, and for the last month assiduously studying the "official" Microsoft test prep, MindHub -- the ones who appear on the MS Learning page. Their practice test questions represented a very narrow subset of the actual test. Just wondering if Transcender is any better. It USED to be (>10 years ago) that Transcender provided a veritable carbon-copy of the exam, and if you had it down, you were set. Is that still the case? Thanks!
I have used various Transcender products over the years. The most recent ones were 70-457 and 70-458 for transitioning SQL Server 2008 cert to 2012/2014. I have always found them almost *too* much like the actual exams. I have never looked specifically at the Transcender material for 70-464, but I would expect it to be pretty accurate and useful for exam preparation. Regardless of which exam prep material you use, I strongly recommend downloading SQL Server Developer Edition (free [here][1]), installing it somewhere (directly on local machine, local VM, or cloud VM), and experimenting. It's a full Enterprise Edition with license restrictions for development and testing, so you can play around with anything that might be covered on the exam. Good luck next try passing your exam. :) [1]:
https://myprodscussu1.app.vssubscriptions.visualstudio.com/Downloads?q=SQL%20Server%20Developer
Thanks very much for that info on Transcender, Tom, very helpful! Good to know that it's *still* "almost too much like the actual exams" ;-) I mean, what a racket, eh? Yeah, I've been a SQL developer for 25 years, have lots of editions, and I use the Enterprise editions of 2012, -16 & Azure all day at work, with Dev Ed on my home laptop... so you would think I could have passed 70-464, right? I wasn't expecting it to be easy, they never are, but I was very disappointed with the MindHub prep... the actual test had lots of stuff I'd never even seen before (e.g., transaction marks, query store, lots more), along with much greater concentration than I'd been led to expect on the DMVs. As one who has done very little DBA and troubleshooting work over the years as a developer, and has concentrated on writing code and architecting solutions, I found the test heavy on the former and weak on the latter... not really that much about indexes, for example, and absolutely nothing geared toward coding, by which I mean, no challenging coding problems, and no esoteric questions about various language features (in the programming sense, as opposed to the DBA sense).
just passed the 464 and thought the transcender exam prep did a pretty good job covering the material with very good explanation of the answers ( in most cases ) . just purchased the 465
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