The ASUG BusinessObjects Strategic SIG (BusinessObjects Education) is looking for a few experienced Data Services individuals to work with SAP to help develop the requirements for the new Data Services Certification. We need to find a few representatives with a nice cross section of business verticals with experience as a customer and/or consultant covering international locations.
Data Integrator
Data Quality Manager
Information Steward
Data Migration Experience
Data Warehousing Experience
If you are chosen to work with this team, you will be scheduled for 1 or 2 individual interviews with SAP representatives. They will ask in depth questions regarding the products/areas listed above. Input from these interviews will be used to help develop of this new certification by SAP.
If you are interested in participating and would like to be considered for this opportunity, please post a reply to this discussion. Someone will contact you to get more details about your experience in all of the areas and you will be added to the list of candidates for these interviews.
We are getting ready to contact every who expressed an interest in participating in the Data Services Certification. Some of your profiles are private on BOB so I’m not sure how to reach you other than have you send me an email.
Please email the following information to Tammy Datri (tdatri@grane.com)
We just learned last week that the Data Services Certification project was put on hold by SAP this fall. The process is scheduled to resume after the first of the year.
[list]1. The Job Task Analysis will begin in January and consist of the following:
[list] * 1-2 Hour Interviews with a subset of the candidates who volunteered to help as well as internal SAP consulting resources
* There may be a follow up interview with some of the candidates if needed
* This process is expected to take approximately 3 weeks because of the challenges with scheduling the interviews[/list]2. The next step will be the Exam Creation itself:
[list] * This step will most likely involve everyone who has volunteered as well as internal SAP consulting resources
* This phase is expected to occur in February and March[/list]3. Once the exam is created, they will need to set standard for scoring the exam:
[list] * This step will be used to evaluate the validity of the exam that was created
* They will evaluate the level of difficulty for the test and standards will be set for pass/fail. For example, if the questions are easy, they may determine you need to get 80% correct to pass. If the questions are hard, they may determine you need to get 60% correct
* This step will involve 10-15 volunteers and internal SAP consultants[/list]4. The final step will be to develop the actual blue print for the exam:
[list] * The certification/exam will be based on the 4.1 platform
* The goal is to have the certification available to the public by mid summer (June timeframe)
* SAP management plans to watch this project closely after the first of the year to assure that these tasks are completed as planned [/list][/list]
Kidding aside, I wouldn’t have done that well with the current exam as it has quite a few questions outside my core area of expertise like deep DQ related questions or MetaData Manager/Information Steward questions.
I would like to think I still would have passed but you never know.
This is actually one set of questions I have when building the new exam
Should we check if somebody knows the tool (a la “What is the second button in the tool palette for?”) or should we go for understanding (e.g. What three transforms are you going to use for a SCD2 dimension?).
Should we scratch the surface (What transform creates the update row of a SCD2 dataflow?) or dig deeper than most people look usually (What will happen if I omit the generated_key column in TC for a SCD2 dataflow?)
Should the exam cover DataServices only or Data Quality and Information Steward as well? I am inclined to say it should cover all but on a very light level (What is the Global Address Cleanse transform for?)
What I like to avoid are questions about functions you either have used or haven’t like “How does the Oracle CDC datastore work” or “What loader option does Teradata have?”. If you have used Teradata you know for sure, if you haven’t you have no way of knowing and frankly you do not care. You will find out easily in the project without having problems. I remember one of such question in the current exam, hence raising the point.
Anyway, I had a first chat yesterday and all that has been said makes perfect sense to me - looking forward to help developing the questions and get the reviewed multiple times or review others’.
What I like in particular is that once we have decided on the questions, a larger set of people will be asked to run through the exam to get a feel of what questions are too easy or too complex for people we know are successfully using DataServices. So lots of validations and sanity checks, that I like.
With no knowledge of the product at all, I would suggest that understanding is the way to go. Then it heads towards real certification rather than ‘Can you read a manual’.
Go for understanding to find people who can use the tool to do real work.
Don’t just scratch the surface, but don’t get too esoteric.
How about an exam in two parts, 75% on DI part of DS and 25% on DQ/IS? Pass the first only (which is all some folks need to show) and get the DS Certification. Pass both and get the DS Certification with DQ endorsement.
Please skip rarely used functions that you read the manual for when the need to use them arises. Thanks for asking about that - I think I remember the question you referenced.
+1 ^^^, but I don’t see it happening. The way the test development process was going when I was at the Influencer session at the ASUG BO conference the test was targetted to a position, not a tool. As an employer I need to know that a candidate KNOWS the TOOL that he or she will be using on day one. Other stuff can be learned OTJ but if you’re fumbling around within the tool that doesn’t look good.
Let me rephrase that according to my understanding - and I might be wrong.
The exam will be based on a job position but the questions are still about the tool. This is actually in your favor.
Imagine DataServices, we could ask about installation, administration, usage, transforms, DQ transforms, relationship to IS, realtime setup, DQM for SAP, so cover a lot of ground.
Now imagine the job profile says that there is not a single person who does the installation and the ETL development, it is always two. One does the administration, the other the ETL. Then we would have two exams targeted to each of the two roles.
DI/DQ same thing. Is it common to have a DQ person who has no clue about DI and vice versa? Or is the common job role one that includes both?
Depending on the outcome of this, the product questions might be restricted to these areas.
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