SAP User ID required for exams

I recently booked a Business Objects Data Integrator exam (DMDI201) at the Pearson Vue website.

On this occasion I noticed that the Pearson Vue website now requests that you enter your SAP User ID:

Pearson Vue SAP User ID Screen

Submitting my SAP User ID allowed me to continue with booking my exam.

If you don’t have a SAP User ID, how can you book an exam? In the first instance, I suggest you contact your regional SAP Support office. They should be able to set up a SAP User ID for you.

This post on the Business Objects forum suggests that people are able to get their SAP User ID’s by contacting support.

Give them a try.

Business Objects Certification – May 2008 Update

For all those that are looking to gain the BusinessObjects certification, BusinessObjects have prepared a short webinar consisting of 16 slides and lasting just over eight minutes. (Note that the webinar does take a while to download).

This should give you plenty of information on how to prepare for the certification.

Many members of the Business Objects community have been contributing useful information and tips on certification via the Business Objects Forum. Track through the following post to read all comments relating to certification.

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, it appears that the SABE501 exam is finally available via the Pearson Vue site. It has a prerequisite – you must have passed the SABE201, SABE301 and SABE401 exams and have attained the BOCP – BOE certification. As this exam relates to XI 3.0, I am not sure that there will be many takers for this exam at this stage. I may consider taking this exam 6-12 months from now.

A few people have asked if it is possible to pass these exams without having taken the classroom or e-learning based training. I believe it is possible to do this. I’ve previously highlighted three or fourPDF documents which are available from the Business Objects website which will help you gain certification. Note however, that the self study method will require a great deal of commitment and practical experience.

Good luck!

SA410 e-learning

In between my client assignments, I’ve been working through the SA410 e-learning course.

To say that I am disappointed with it’s content is a massive understatement. These materials are expensive and I am finding that much of the material in this course is a repetition of the SA210 and SA310 courses. It has left me feeling that something is missing.

I’ve checked through the requirements for the exam, and I feel I have covered all aspects.  I can help but feel that I’ve been short changed by the SA410 e-learning course. Perhaps the classroom based course is different?

I’ll soon find out. I’m taking the SA410 exam later this week. I feel prepared, so hopefully I won’t get any surprises.

SABE310 in the bag

I passed SABE310 today! Thats the second of three towards the BOCP certification.

This exam required a lot of preparation on my part, as there was a lot of material to study. The exam consisted of 50 questions in multiple choice format. Slightly more time was allowed than the SABE210 exam.

For this particular exam, I am glad I took the e-learning course. It helped me a lot. Looking over the PDF guides, I think I would have struggled to get all the necessary information.

I’m now preparing for the final exam – SABE410.

SABE501V3.0 – XI 3.0 update exam?

I spotted the following while booking my SABE310 exam on the Pearson Vue website today:

“Business Objects Certified Professional – BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0 – Update”

As suspected, it looks like there will be an XI3.0 update to the BOCP certification. I can’t find any details on the Business Objects website, and as it hasn’t been officially release yet, it might be a while before we get further details.

SABE210 – Pass!

I recently took the SABE210 Business Objects Enterprise XIR2 Administering Users & Content exam, and passed! It’s a relief to get the first one out of the way.

The exam consists of 40 multiple choice questions, and you are given 80 minutes to complete the exam. I found that this was more than enough time to go through all the questions thoroughly, and leave sufficient time at the end to review any outstanding questions.

The pass grade is 65%. You get given your score immediately at the end of the exam. As long as you get 65% or over, you have a ‘Pass’ and this is what counts towards the BOCP certification.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I did question whether this exam could be done without taking the classroom or e-learning courses. I think you can. However, I would stress that you need to have a very good working knowledge of BOE at Administrator level. Reading the relevant PDF guides (Admin, Deployment), which you can download for free from the BOBJ support website, will also help.

Having said that, the elearning course does help. It presents the information in a logical manner and provides you with tests at the end of each section. These are of a similar format to the final exam. I found that the elearning course fills in gaps in your knowledge. I also learnt a couple of new things which I plan on implementing on client site.

I’m going to start on the SABE310 Administering Servers elearning exam in the next few days. The SABE310 course looks far more substantial and appears to focus heavily on architecture and configuration. I suspect this means learning about the various parameters that can be set for each server and how they all talk to each other. While I am familiar with what the servers do and process flows, I have to admit that I don’t know all the server parameters by heart.

Due to this, I will be taking this as an e-learning course. Worth noting that this elearning course is more expensive than SABE210, and is normally presented as a 3 day classroom based course. The SABE210 course is normally a 2 day classroom course.

Further updates later in the week.

Business Objects Certification – Part One – SA210

As mentioned in an earlier post, I enrolled on the SA210 Business Objects Enterprise XIR2 Administering Users & Content e-learning course. This, together with experience and the various PDF guides available from the BOBJ Support site, should give me enough material to pass the SABE210 exam. Although I can’t confirm this, I have read in the BOBJ forum that the e-learning material is based on the same material as that used for the classroom based course.

The course itself is delivered via the web. It is broken down into a number of easy to manage lessons. Most lessons have practical exercises with worked examples. These are quite simple and reiterate material presented in the lesson. At the end of each lesson, you are given a short test ranging between two and eight multiple choice questions. If you have gone through and understood the material in the lesson, these tests shouldn’t pose much of a problem. You can go through the lessons and tests as many times as you like. Note: the test scores do not count towards the final exam!

The material is quite thorough and plenty of examples are provided throughout. To further expand your knowledge, I would suggest reading the XIR2 Admin and Installation PDF guides. These can be downloaded from the BOBJ support website.

To be honest, all of the material presented in the course is available in these guides. However, the course material manages to extract the key elements and present it in easy to manage lessons. You also don’t have the benefit of the practical exercises or tests.

On the positive side, the course is comprehensive, offers plenty of detail, has practical exercises and contains handy tests.

Two downsides in my opinion. Firstly, cost. In the UK, the course will set you back £580. This is not a trivial sum of money, particularly for a web based course. While it is half the price of the equivalent classroom based course, I do feel it is expensive, particularly if you compare this to a similar IT course of the same duration. Secondly, you don’t get any printed materials. While you do have access to the web course material for one year, it would be incredibly useful to have the printed materials. Considering the cost of the course, surely BOBJ could have stretched themselves to providing the same printed material as handed out in the classroom course?

I do wonder whether it is possible to pass the SABE210 exam solely based on experience and the Installation and Admin guides alone. I should be able to answer that in the next few days. I’m going to be taking the SABE210 exam shortly. While I won’t be able to post any details about the exam, I should be able to give an indication as to whether it is worth taking the course.

XI 3.0 certification

As I start out on the road to BOCP-BOE XIR2 certification, I can’t help but wonder whether it was worth waiting for the XI 3.0 certifications to come out.

However, most clients appear to be on XIR2 or planning to migrate to XIR2, and I don’t think we’ll see much in the way of a mass migration to XI 3.0 for at least 12 months.

Business Objects Certification

I’ve never been a big fan of technical certifications. I firmly believe that it’s experience what counts. And experience shows when on site and tackling a complex problem.

However, there are times when having a formal certification could give you the edge in a new job, contract or sale. Sometimes, that is all that is required – an edge.

I have therefore decided to take the three exams to becoming a Business Objects Certified Professional (BOCP).

I don’t feel I need to take the full classroom based course. I have worked with and administered XI for a couple of years, and the classroom course is quite expensive in relation to other IT courses.  However, I want to make sure I don’t have any gaps in my knowledge which get highlighted in an exam.

Fortunately, Business Objects offer an e-learning option which covers the same material as the classroom based course. It is half the price of the classroom course and I can study the course material in my own time. While I don’t get the training manuals and the ability to ask questions to a tutor, I do have access to the materials for one year, which is more than sufficient.

In the next few days, I’m be taking the Business Objects Enterprise XIR2 Administering Users & Content e-learning course. I’ll be posting an update as to whether it offers good value for money.