Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert

 I passed yesterday AZ-303 exam so now I call myself 

Yay!

Next step: data engineer associate, coming soon.

AZ-304 certification

I passed yesterday Microsoft's AZ-304 certification, one step towards Azure Solutions Architect Expert.

I prepared pretty well for this exam so I didn't find it too difficult. I used Pluralsight series for this exam, Sybex's Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies and Design (Study Guide), plus a few other materials including quite a lot MS documentation (read well Overview or FAQ pages), but I found interesting Mark Grimes' YouTube videos (1, 2, ...).

Next obvious step is AZ-303 scheduled in a few days. Sure is easier to prepare for both at the same time.

The only negative was waiting an hour on VUE online app to be verified before starting the exam. They talk about 15 minutes but in my case was a full hour.

PMI-ACP renewal PDUs

 Also today I've just finished the last online course to maintain my PMI-ACP certification, due for renewal in Feb 2021. For this cycle of 3 years I had to do 30 PDUs to maintain it.

For last few days I was watching some videos, approved by PMI, to earn those PDUs. As you may know, the rule of thumb is 1 PDU for 1 hour of conference or virtual event, so you can do the math. Quite a lot of information to review all theory tested by ACP exam, and even more.

Salesforce Sharing and Visibility Designer certification

Two days ago I got my 3rd Salesforce certification, Sharing and Visibility Designer:

This is the 1st one for architect level, one more to go for Salesforce solution architect. Yay!

ServiceNow certification

I got my ServiceNow Admin certification more than 2 year ago and since then I took a few delta exams, an open-book exam about changes introduced by new releases. Until now those delta exams were free, and mandatory to maintain the certification, but with current release ("Paris") they introduced a $200 annual fee.

It was announced almost half a year ago but I didn't actually pay attention to that small detail. Today I received an email reminding me the calendar, as the exam should happen before Jan 7th, 2021.

Sorry ServiceNow, but I think I'll just let this certification expire. My initial plans were different and didn't use this certification at all, so paying $200 / year just to maintain it is out of question. I intend to maintain some other certifications I have, and I'd do it for ServiceNow, too, if they were free, but not in these new conditions they introduced.

.NET 5.0

Launched yesterday at dotnetconf.net I've just installed .NET 5.0:

• Downloaded and installed .NET 5 SDK. Checked.
• Updated Visual Studio to 18.6. Checked.
• Read the release notes. Checked.
• Read EF Core 5.0 release notes. Checked.
• Watch dotnetconf.net. Checked.

No more release candidate version, and no more .NET Core (except EF), but one unified platform. I'd like that, when all parts will be ready.

Salesforce platform developer 1 certification

 As planned, today I took and happily passed my 2nd Salesforce certification: platform developer 1.

The next one for Salesforce Application Architect credential path will have to wait a while, as the preparation for it will take a bit longer, but hopefully will come.