What's Covered on the Exam

The Microsoft Learning site identifies seven key areas covered by the 70-433 exam.
However, the relative weight in the exam varies by area. The following list
itemizes the areas and gives the weight for each area as a percentage:

Implementing tables and views (14)

Implementing programming objects (16)
Working with query fundamentals (21)
Applying additional query techniques (15)
Working with additional SQL Server components (11)
Working with XML data (12)
Gathering performance information (11)

The exam emphasizes new features and emerging topics, but it also covers
traditional topics as well. The good news about this twin attention to new and
traditional topics is that preparing for the exam will force a degree of
familiarity with a wide variety of database development features, including some
traditional ones that you rarely or never use as well as nearly all the new
database development topics. You need to be fully conversant with table design
issues as well as have an intimate knowledge of how to program and secure the use
of stored procedure, trigger, and user-defined functions. In considering table
design, you will need to know about the new data types for dates and times as well
as the SQL Server 2008 support for geometric and geographic data. In addition, you
may encounter questions on defining and managing indexes for tables and indexed
views. Be sure to learn about filtered indexes. Also make sure you understand
column versus table constraints as well as foreign key constraints. Make sure you
know the differences between AFTER versus INSTEAD OF for DML triggers and acquire a
complete understanding of the OUTPUT clause with INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, and MERGE
statements. Also, have a good working knowledge of DDL triggers.

The practical consequence of the emphasis on new features for either SQL Server
2008 or SQL Server 2005 is that you must have a hands-on feel for applying new
database development functionality. This will generally cause your database
applications to run faster and/or be more efficient at processing large data
sources. I was personally impressed by the way preparation and actual test
questions drilled down on topics like managing partitioned tables, aggregation with
CUBE, ROLLUP, and GROUPING SETS operators, specifying and using Common Table
Expressions, modification by MERGE statements, SQL Server Service Broker, new
ranking features (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, and NTILE), Change Tracking and
Change Data Capture. The Full-Text Search capability is actually a traditional
topic, but it was substantially revised with SQL Server 2008. It would be a big
mistake to take the exam without a good hands-on feel for all these topics.

While XML is not really a new SQL Server topic, its widespread adoption by DBA
developers might legitimately be characterized as still evolving. The exam asks
slightly more than ten percent of its questions on XML processing topics, and the
correct answers for these questions can be non-obvious if you do not have a
thorough grasp of the appropriate content. In particular, learn all the variations
of the FOR XML clause. This clause in a SELECT statement lets you output relational
data in a variety of different XML formats. You should also have a working
knowledge of the XML data type methods, such as query, value, exist, modify, and
nodes. Exam questions can require an extremely detailed knowledge of the OPENXML
function. You can use the OPENXML function in the FROM clause of a SELECT statement
to output XML content in a classic tabular format. Learn XML Schema Collections and
how to use them for converting un-typed XML to typed XML. Also, become familiar
with the different types of XML indexes, potential conflicts between primary XML
index declarations, as well as how to and what the benefits are of complementing
primary XML indexes with secondary XML indexes.
Many SQL Server DBAs will have some familiarity with execution plans, SQL Server
Profiler, Database Engine Tuning Advisor. If you are not intimately familiar with
these tools use your preparation time for the exam to master the topics because
questions on these topics can be very subtle if you have only a slight familiarity
or no basic understanding of the topics. A working understanding of these topics
will help you learn about how SQL Server is performing or can perform better. On a
related topic, learn how dynamic management functions and views can help you gather
performance and related information. As I was preparing for the exam, I found
myself regularly referring to this subset: sys.dm_exec_requests;
sys.dm_exec_sessions; sys.dm_exec_sql_text; sys.dm_exec_query_stats;
sys.dm_os_wait_stats; sys.dm_exec_query_plan; sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats.