Great news today, I just got the acceptance email into the SSAS Maestro programme in June over in Redmond !!
You can read a bit about the programme from Kasper and Denny’s blogs:
http://www.powerpivotblog.nl/do-you-have-what-it-takes-to-become-ssas-maestro
http://sqlcat.com/msdnmirror/archive/2011/01/30/what-is-the-ssas-maestros.aspx
If I’m successful, I’ll have the SQL MCA, MCM, MVP and SSAS Maestro. Hmm, might look a bit pretentious on an email signature.
I’m sure the course content will be under NDA so I won’t be able to blog much, but Vidas made up a good reading list so we know what to expect.
http://www.ssas-info.com/VidasMatelisBlog/208_ssas-white-paper-list
Luckily, I’ve already read (err skimmed and know they exist) all background reading, as part of my day job as a consultant is to point customers to appropriate white papers that underpin a problem they may be having.
Will have to go back to re-read as many and possible and brush up on my MDX and SSAS internals which my real weak point at the best of times.
For me the most frustrating thing about Analysis Services is that thanks to Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp and many others we know “so” much about the SQL Server DB Engine, how it works, why it makes choices and even the on disk structure. However with Analysis Services a lot of the product is still black box to all but a few insiders. Even if we can quote best practices we don’t often truly understand why its a best practice to evaluate the choices we make. Hopefully the Maestro programme will change all that for me.
While I’m lording it up in Redmond for a week (fancy Hotel, food and uninterrupted sleep), Carmel will have to get the six kiddies up and to school, etc for a week without me, as well as putting up with me trying to cram in reading between now and June. I will be owing some major brownie points for sure.
