Rob Farley

Rob Rob Farley has been consulting in IT since completing a Computer Science degree with first class honours in 1997. Before moving to Adelaide, he worked in consultancies in Melbourne and London. He runs the development department in one of Australia's leading IT firms, as well as doing database application consultancy and training. He heads up the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, and holds several Microsoft certifications.

Rob has been involved with Microsoft technologies for most of his career, but has also done significant work with Oracle and Unix systems. His preferred database is SQL Server and his preferred language is C#. Recently he has been involved with Microsoft Learning in the US, creating and reviewing new content for the next generation of Microsoft exams.

Over the years, Rob's clients have included BP Oil, OneLink Transit, Accenture, Avanade, Australian Electorial Commission, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Royal Borough of Kingston, Help The Aged, Unisys, Department of Treasury and Finance (Vic), National Mutual, the Bible Society and others.

Did you mean to come here? My blog is now at http://msmvps.com/blogs/robfarley



14 December 2005

I don't feel much like a DBA today

I sat 071-444 this morning. I felt like I didn't know all the answers straight away, as is the case for most exams I do. But if I did fail it, then I don't really mind too much. I'm not a full-time DBA by any stretch of the imagination. I know quite a bit about DBA principles, but I'd rather do design, tuning, querying, that kind of thing.

And there were still questions that had me thinking that none of the answers were right. I think this exam would've been better off with a scenario situation. "Answer this question. Now you get these results from this query - what does this tell you? What do you do next?" - that kind of thing. Instead it was 82 questions over 210 minutes, all completely distinct. I felt myself disengage way too many times. I didn't really want to be there. Does anyone ever want to be in an exam? I guess I should, now that I'm signed up for another two in January. *sigh*

Posted by Rob Farley at 1:30 pm