BI Certifications - CBIP Material for the exam

Finally I got some time to write something more about CBIP certification.

First off all, don’t think this certification is the ticket for your next job. It’s just a motivation to let you learn more and improve your skills. Naturally that if you improve your skills, you have more conditions and recognition to get your BI job, but don’t think a certification by itself do it for you.  Relating to this certification, it's a way to TDWI makes money like all other certifications that exists around the world. But at least in this case, it seems more credible and more recognized than for example Microsoft certifications. Why? Just because there are a lot of “brain dumps” spread in the internet with exactly some questions of the real Microsoft exams. TDWI do a very good job on this field… although having a big number of question not aligned with the certification subject (like for example in ETL module) they are good and unique! The TDWI staff in Germany is also amazing and very kindly with you! See my experience there in 2009!

Now let’s go to the main reason to write this post! I’ve promised to the dozens of people that contacted me (almost since the post I wrote about CBIP experience in 2009) for help them on getting material guidance. For that reason here am I with the promised post! (Sorry for the late reply).

To make these exams, you should have minimal real-world, or at least huge academic experience, on the exam specialty that you’re thinking to get. If you have this pre-requisite then I think you should consider the suggestions I’m writing below.

Suggestion 01 - Examinations Guide

You MUST buy and read the CBIP Examinations Guide. This guide contains detailed exam outlines, reference reading lists, sample exam questions, and answer explanations for each exam included in the CBIP program. Testing software and practice timed exams are included with the guide. Taking the sample exams will identify areas where additional study and/or work experience may be necessary prior to testing. If you don’t have this examinations guide you will probably feel lost during the exam… And don’t forget that you don’t have too much time to think! The testing software is for sure crucial!

Suggestion 02 - Mandatory Books

You MUST buy and read the “Performance Dashboard” and “Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App” books! Why? The first, in addition to being a very interesting book, was written by the TDWI director at that time: Wayne Eckerson! And the second is a book that resumes the concept of BI in a simple and objective way. These two books are an investment that you should have! (And buy it… do not try to find illegal copies of this book on the internet… because doing so, you’ll not encourage authors to write more amazing contents like these ones). I should add that on these books, you will find several answers to some exam questions.

Now let’s go to remaining materials that although not mandatory, should be read at least some of the topics where exist some doubts. You probably don’t have time to read more books, but I also suggest several others in a previous post. Try also to get some information in the internet about the following topics: Dimensional Modeling (Techniques like Slowly Changing Dimension, Junk Dimension, Mini-Dimension, Outrigger, Role-Play Dimension… Fact table types: Transactional, Cumulative Snapshot, Periodic Snapshot, Factless and Factless Coverage), Data Warehousing architectures (Bus model, Hub and Spoke, Federated and Independent Data Marts), OLAP Architectures (MOLAP, ROLAP, HOLAP), Data Warehousing Methodologies (Both Kimball and Larissa Moss methodologies), Data Mining and make some research on terms like BPM, CRM, OLAP, ETL, BAM…
I hope this post helps you!
Regards,
Pedro

BI Conference - European TDWI Conference

Today I want to advise you for a big and very interesting conference that will take place at Germany between 14th and 16th June... The 10th European TDWI conference! This conference will provide both business and technology professionals significant opportunities to learn and understand best practices across a wide variety of BI topics.

I can assure you that the conference will be very interesting as well as the country itself that is fantastic! I was there last November 2009 to take the CBIP exams and it was amazing. If you are near Germany or even in Europe don’t waste this opportunity. I hope someday organize CBIP/TDWI exams here in Portugal for all the BI Portuguese professionals interested on this certification. Regards, Pedro.

BI Certifications - CBIP/TDWI Certifications done!

I started writing this post on the return trip to Portugal. It was a very enriching and experience trip, which I reached one more objective I had in mind for more than two years. I passed the four exams and got the specialization in Business Analytics and Data Management provided by The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI - www.TDWI.org)

To whom I dedicate this achievement...I'd like to dedicate the achievement of this goal, besides of course my family and girlfriend who accompanied me on this trip to Germany, two very special persons. Firstly, to Mrs. Maria José Trigueiros for all messages and follow that gave me along the master. Secondly, to my master adviser Mr. Orlando Belo, who accompanied me on a daily basis during the dissertation. These two persons, directly and indirectly supported me in the last two years, and for sure without them, it would be difficult to maintain my motivation and strength to deepen my knowledge in this amazing world of Business Intelligence.

The exams…Relating to the exams, what I felt was that in fact, the level of difficulty is high and mainly because there is less than a minute to answer to each question. There are 110 questions to be answered in 90 minutes ... Each question has 4 possible answers, where two of them are usually very similar and can be confusing ... When the "mother" language is not English, is even more complicated because some questions and their answers are long.

Fortunately, I was lucky to begin with the apparently the less complicated exam to make, and it allowed me to understand the time management that should be looked at, in order to do other exams. To get an idea, in the first exam when I had only 5 minutes to finish, I had 20 questions to answer... it was an authentic stress and the last question was answered over the last second ... There's no time to think and go back to review the answers ... that is, or you known the answer and quickly respond to a question, or it will be better to go ahead to next question!

It is difficult to describe the best way to prepare for the exams ... Normally the scope of a normal exam it’s a well-defined scope and the issues are related to the context and usually reading a book or two is enough. But in CBIP/TDWI exams it is quite different... you need to have a real-world experience and read several (many) books. But for the preparation and bibliography to make the CBIP exams, I’ll prepare/describe in a future post.

I made and passed in four exams: Information Systems (core), Data Warehouse (core), Business Analytics and Data Management that turns me a specialized professional in Business Analytics and Data Management. The more complicated exam was the Information Systems which is too much technical and detailed.

TDWI Germany Centre...It all started at 8:00 in the morning of last Friday (06-Nov-2009)... in the TDWI Germany centre, located about 30 km’s from Cologne (Germany) where I was accommodated with my girlfriend Joana. The facilities of the centre are very good and the staff really fantastic, especially Simmone and Mr. Guenter Fuhrmeister, CEO of SIGS DATACOM (TDWI Partner) ... They both received me very well and they greatly reduced my stress caused by so many tests on the same day. In addition to all the sympathy and coffees, snacks, drinks, and others... they offered me an amazing book that I will start reading during this week, wrote by Frank Buytendijk. (Click on the book image to preview the book)



The Cologne city...Cologne (German: Köln) is Germany's fourth-largest city after Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, and is the largest city both in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than 10 million habitants. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having been founded by the Romans in the year 30 BC.
Cologne lies on the Rhine. The city's world famous Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishopric of Cologne. The University of Cologne (Universität zu Köln) is one of Europe's oldest universities and internationally renowned for its economics department.

(reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne)

The party...At the end it was the party where my princess Joana was waiting for me at the in Cologne... we started enjoy this fabulous city with some of the advices given by Simone. We were focused mainly in the shopping area and near the Rhine river. It is a beautiful city with an intense movement of people not only in the shopping area, but also in the restaurants and bars area. We attend, almost every day, to a Cuban bar where we drank exotic drinks as capiroska, mojito and others!


My sensation is that I’ll return to Germany to take the other CBIP specializations very soon... I hope this post was helpful to you.

Regards,

Pedro

BI Certification - CBIP Exams

Dear friends,
Passed almost a month after the last time I wrote here ... In fact last month has been very hard… and the next also promised with several projects in mind. And one of these projects that I've been thinking for more than 2 years… is the world Business Intelligence certification (CBIP) provided by TDWI.

The TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute™) was founded in 1995 and provides education, training, certification, news, and research for executives and information technology (IT) professionals worldwide.

Next 6 November 2009, I’ll be in Germany to take the CBIP exams for at least one of the 5 key specialities.

– Leadership & Management
– Business Analytics
– Data Analysis & Design
– Data Integration
– Administration & Technology

I’ll try 3 specialities exams, plus 2 other exams that are required and common to all specialities:

Information Systems
Data Warehousing

I have a lot of subjects to write… I’ll promise (once again) that I’ll be more often writing here…
Regards,
Pedro