Passed my Certification Exam!

I passed by Biztalk 2006 Certification Exam Today. I would say that I am more relieved than happy. I have One regret though, I wish I was working on Biztalk in my Current project. My last Biztalk Project was 3 months ago and it was heavily tilted towards Biztalk 2004. Ongoing real world project experience in Biztalk 2006 would have definitely helped my preparation . My preparation was spread just over TWO weekends. I used 2 weekends (4 days) to go over Two Books: Biztalk Recipes - 2006, Biztalk - 2004 Unleashed. Tried my hands on SDK samples for BRE/BAM and read as much I could read from Microsoft website. I was sleep deprived on these weekends :)

I will not recommend the approach I took. I had to take this approach because of my situation. Ideally, I would recommended to spend at least 2 days on doing BAM, BRE and other examples from SDK. Working on ongoing Biztalk project will definitely give an edge while preparing for exam. There will be no need to specially allocate time to prepare for the exam like I had to do. I knew that Orchestration, Messaging and Administration were my strong areas. For this reason, I made an effort to focus more on areas like BAM, BRE and Role Link that are not my strengths.

Percentage breakdown of my preparation:

1. 50% of my time on BAM, BRE and Role Links
2. 20% on Orchestration, Messaging
3. 10% What is new in Biztalk 2006
3. 10% on Deployment and Administration
4. 10% on Random Readings on Biztalk Blogs.