asked
Going out of my comfort zone...development
OK...so I have an ambition to sometime in the next 2 or 3 years to attempt the MCM (Microsoft Certified Master), as long as my company is willing to pay for it of course. Anyway I have the administrative stuff down, with the exception of those handfull of features I have not worked with before. Which a DBA cannot work with everything, there are going to be some holes to fill. I plan on sitting the 70-450 exam sometime in May 2011. If I pass that then I will have the DBA track meet for SQL Server 2008. The other pre-requisite for MCM is obtaining the MCITP DEV certification for SQL 2008. Here in lines my problem on the dev certifications: I'm not a developer. I know how to read T-SQL and can write some basic things. I'm not going to bang out any advanced code by heart or anything. It would be safe to say I have a basic understanding of coding and T-SQL. What books/tutorials/suggestions can be given to broaden my horizons in the dev area of SQL Server? What I have so far is Itzik Ben-Gan's book on T-SQL Fundamentals for SQL 2008 and a teach yourself book on C#. I want to learn C# since I see it most commonly referenced in things with SQL Server (this may have changed). I don't want to become a developer necessarily but would like to learn more of it, obviously to pass the test, but also just cause I'm interested in learning it to some degree.
I'm pretty sure the 'dev' part is for sql dev not c# dev - you shouldn't need it to get MCITP SQL Dev
If you do want an overview to CLR - then I did a session on it at SQL Bits 7 which covers a lot of how to implement code for CLR objects. It's a whistle-stop tour - and try to ignore the ugly guy at the front.
Doesn't CLR integration involve using a coding language other than T-SQL?
I by no means want to become an expert in C#, but do want to get familar with it incase a question(s) gets thrown into the test.
In SSIS 2008 they added C# as a script language for a Script task (it was VB only in 2005), and in SSRS, I think, it's still VB only as a language for inner code. However, for SQL server 2008 development certification you don't need either C# or VB. On the Miscrosoft learning portal there is a list of skills measured in this exam (
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-451&locale=en-us#tab2). The only "alien" language there is XML :)
