MCSE FTQ Study Group

I can clearly remember when my friend failed SQL Server for Windows NT exam on her first try on MCSE exam. We had about 2 years' experience on SQL Server. We once thought we are the pioneers to use SQL server at that time, SQL server is not popular anyhow and so did the NT(NT only on its version 3.1 ) Besides SQL server,We also had several years' experience on Oracle and Sybase. We thought no one can be more familiar with SQL Server than us in China. How come she failed the exam? It seems unbelievable ,but it is true.!!!The first idea come to my mind is her English is poor,for English is not our native language. But she told me even she translate all the questions in Chinese, the same thing, I can't answer the question . We made a bet then, she would ask me 3 questions from the exam , if I could answer two of them , I win. I was quite self-confident then and waiting for her questions. What I thought about the most difficult question should be using trigger to make join of a table or using some stored procedure or something like this .... Her first question came, 'When you installed SQL Server , what is default character set ?' My Gosh! I installed SQL Server tens of times , but I just press Enter at that time, Who care the character set if the system works!!You can guess out the final result.3:0. I lost the game.I am like the Chinese soccer team, it can win Hong Kong, but it lost.

We are not the people easy to give up, and worked hard to figure out why she failed. But the answer is simple, why she failed , just can't remember Moft's text book "SQL Server for Windows NT".(we also call this book resouce kit now). Actually you can find everything there. There printed in page xxx 'the default character set is 850'. What a bored guy Moft is. They test everything from every corner of this book. That's OK if you guys can remeber every word of this book. However, most of us can not. When we are reading this book,seems we understand everything. While in real examination, we gotta lost! It is Moft that let you lost! In their opinion, it is the only way to let you become a specialist of Moft product. Anyway, even if I know nothing about 850 , I am still an excellent programmer.

But seems MCP and MCSE are more important than the title of excellent programmer by myself. I need them! The comming story is I studied hard on Moft's text book despite my complain about Moft. You know what a tedious work it is! (And I swear I 'll nerver do this kind of stuff , never!!!)

I passed the SQLserver exam in one morning with bright sunshine. But unlike lots of guys who passed exam, I feel more tired than happy.

However, we found one thing after the exam, all those three questions she asked me last time appeared in my exam!!!!!!!!!! We tried to remember as many questions we tested as possible, and about 40-50% are the same. We wrote it down (We call it FTQ--Frequently Tested Questions) and gave it to our friends who want to take this exam. Unbelievable, they all passed the exam. One of my friend told me it really gave him a big hand, and he could not imagine what would happen without FTQ. He said FTQ can ring a bell to you when you read the Moft's text book. You are aware of sth. may be missing on your reading. Also it is the only way to avoid Mircosoft 's trap on the real exam.

FTQ Homepage

This page is designed by Wang Wei, last update June 24,1998