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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
ANSWER: In the USA or Canada, please call Prometric to register by phone 800-792-EXAM or online at: https://www.2test.com.
If you are from a country other than the US or Canada, follow your normal registration procedures through your local exam center or your Prometric Regional Service Center. To find out about registration procedures for your region (select 'Sybase' from the 'Client/Program' drop-down box.)
ANSWER: Completely read and make sure you cover all parts of this exam study guide. Plan to spend a minimum of 80 hours preparing for the exam, in addition to your existing experience with ASE.
At least twelve months of experience using the product, and take the following recommended courses. Please check the schedule at: Sybase Education Course Catalog
Fast Track to Adaptive Server Enterprise
Performance and Tuning: Adaptive Server Enterprise Query Optimizer
QUESTION: What is the format of this exam?
ANSWER: The exam format will consist of 60 multiple-choice questions. Each candidate will have 90 minutes to complete the exam. The exam itself has no answers that are not 'real', e.g. no references to functions or commands, which do not exist. It was written to test whether you have been using ASE and are able to apply this knowledge.
QUESTION: Are there any suggestions on how to study for this exam?
ANSWER: Work with ASE and SQL programming for at least twelve months before taking this exam. If you have taken a corresponding course, review all of its pages, especially for the topics you have not already mastered. The study guidelines below cover all the topics included in the exam. Read through this list and circle the topics you are not familiar with. Read up on them in the product documentation. Find ways to use those aspects of ASE and SQL programming you are not as familiar with; consider creating test cases.
QUESTION: Which version of ASE should I study for this exam?
ANSWER: Though this exam will test your SQL development experience on ASE it is based on the latest ASE GA version.
QUESTION: What are some suggestions for when I take this exam?
ANSWER: All questions are multiple-choice questions. Do not spend too much time on any one question. Trust that the first answer that you thought of is likely to be the correct one. At the end of the exam you will be presented with a window with hyperlinks back to any questions you marked for 'review' or did not answer completely. With this in mind, choose an answer and if you are not sure, mark the question for 'review' (there is a button for this). Moving along this way you should have time at the end of the exam to go back and think again about these marked questions.
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STUDY GUIDELINES
Section 1 - ANSI SQL - DDL (6 questions - 10%)
- This section will focus on creating tables, views, indexes, etc.Topics may also include system and user-defined datatypes, column properties such as null and identity, and temporary tables.
Section 2 - ANSI SQL - DML (6 questions - 10%)
- This section will focus on data manipulation commands: select, insert, update, and delete, and cursors. Topics may include the important clauses of DML statements, such as where, having, order by, etc. This section also includes the performance and tuning aspects of these statements, such as direct and deferred updates, etc.
Section 3 - Data Integrity and Constraints (6 questions - 10%)
- This section will focus on both the ANSI-standard constraints, such as check constraints and primary key constraints, as well as the traditional Sybase data integrity mechanisms such as rules and defaults.
Section 4 - Joins, Subqueries, and Unions (6 questions - 10%)
- This section will focus on the different types of joins, the union and union all command, and subqueries. Topics may also include join costing and subquery optimization, showplan and the trace flags.
Section 5 - Transact-SQL Statements (8 questions - 13%)
- This section will focus on Sybase-specific Transact-SQL commands, such as functions, programming commands such as if and while, local and global variables.
Section 6 - Stored Procedures and Triggers (6 questions - 10%)
- This section will focus on both writing and tuning stored procedures and triggers. Topics may include passing parameters, return status, the inserted and deleted tables, and query plans and the procedure cache.
Section 7 - Transaction Management and Locking (6 questions - 10%)
- This section will focus on the behavior of transactions and on the behavior of locks as seen by developers. Topics may include the transaction management commands, definition of transaction isolation levels, and transaction logging, as well as lock blocking, diagnosis and resolution of deadlocks, effect of transaction isolation level on lock behavior, lock size, scope, and types, and methods for reducing lock contention
Section 8 - Access Methods (5 questions - 8%)
- This section will focus on serial and parallel access methods. Topics may include table scans vs clustered and nonclustered index scans, range queries, point queries, and covered queries, as well as partition-based and hash-based scans.
Section 9 - Optimizer Statistics (4 questions - 7%)
- This section will focus on both table-level and distribution statistics. Topics may include the types of statistics, such as cluster ratios, density values, and histograms, as well as how to manage, modify, and simulate statistics.
Section 10 - Query Optimization (7 questions - 12%)
- This section will focus on the query optimizer. Topics may include index selection, SARGs, the Or Strategy, showplan, and the relevant traceflags, as well as overriding the optimizer and using Abstract Plans.
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