SAP BW Certification

This chapter is excerpted from the book titled, 'SAP BW Certification: A Business Information Warehouse Study Guide', authored by Catherine M. Roze, published Oct, 2002 by Wiley Publishing, ISBN 978-0-471-23634-4, Copyright 2002 Wiley Publishing. For more information, please visit: Wiley Publishers.

What You'll Find in Chapter 2
Benefits of the SAP BW certification
Where to take the exam and how to register
How to prepare for the exam: prerequisites and resources
Exam format, rules, and procedures
Certification requirements and scoring
SAP BW certification exam content and weighting
Getting the results
Download Chapters One and Two pdf file.

Chapter Excerpt:
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Preparing for the Exam
There is no essential prerequisite to the SAP BW certification exam. However, experience with data warehousing and/or SAP R/3 is highly recommended. To get the most out of this certification study guide and maximize their chances on the SAP BW certification test, candidates should have one or more of the following:

* Previous experience and participation in an SAP BW project implementation
* A strong desire to learn SAP BW
* Detailed understanding of data warehousing, and specialization in one of the following areas: Extract, transform, and load (ETL) design
* Data modeling
* Report design
* Data warehouse project management
* Knowledge of reporting and analysis in SAP/R3 reporting environments, for example, * Logistics Information Systems (LIS), Report Writer/Report Navigator, ABAP/4 Programming
* Some knowledge of SAP BASIS administration

Depending on your understanding of the subject matter, in addition to this book it may be useful to study other materials. SAP's documentation, such as the SAP BW Library, the online help documentation in the SAP BW software, and the reference materials provided in appendixes may be helpful.

It is recommended to attend SAP BW training offered by SAP Education Centers (more details provided in Chapter 3). One of the benefits of attending the training is to obtain the SAP BW training material.1 This material contains detailed and content-rich SAP BW information that is considered necessary for the test. This training curriculum also includes exercises to be completed during class on a live SAP BW system that will give you the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the exam's subject area.

It is also very important to have hands-on experience with the system to apply the techniques and concepts covered in the exam. You should have access to an SAP BW server with which to experiment.

Although it is possible to attain the SAP BW certification by attending SAP classes and studying books and other documentation, you absolutely need real-world experience with SAP BW to successfully perform and contribute on an SAP BW project.


The Exam
This section describes the actual process for taking the exam, including:
Examination rules and procedures
Format of the exam
SAP dictates the rules used during the examination:

Candidates must produce an official valid identification document with photo, for example, passport or driver's license, before they can receive the examination papers and logon password.
Candidates must complete the examination alone and independently.
No assistance is allowed, except as follows:
Candidates whose mother tongue is not the language of the examination may use a dictionary provided that it contains no notes and is inspected and accepted by the proctor before the start of the examination.
Errors in the dictionary or documentation are the candidate's responsibility and no such error will be reason for any review of the result of the examination.
The time available to candidates to complete the examination is limited and can be neither interrupted nor extended.
Candidates must follow the proctor's instructions.
The examination questions and tasks are copyrighted and must not be written down, copied, or otherwise reproduced in whole or in part or made available to others in any form.
If a candidate disturbs the examination or breaks any examination rule, that candidate will be excused from the examination immediately. The exam format is as follows:
The tests are administered by computer.
You are given a set time limit for the test (90 minutes) and must answer 60 questions. You can mark questions to return to later if you are not sure of the answers.
Passing the exam requires a minimum of 70%. Your pass/fail grade will be reported to you four to six weeks after you have sat for the exam.
The questions are chosen randomly from a pool of thousands of questions. Each candidate in the same classroom will have the same questions in the exam, but will have them presented in a different sequence from the other candidates to prevent teaming.
The questions generally fall into two categories:

Questions that have only one correct answer
Questions that have more than one correct answer

Single Answer (only one answer)
Single answers are basic multiple-choice questions for which only one answer is correct and these are generally the easiest. Each question will have four or five answers listed. The correct answer must be selected. For example:
A conceptual description of data objects, their attributes, and the relationships between them is:

A data warehouse
A data model
An InfoCatalog
An InfoSet
An InfoSource
Answer: b.

These questions often address facts and figures included in the exam objectives. Although these are relatively easy questions, many of them are purposely worded to be confusing or to encourage jumping to conclusions. Be sure to read the questions carefully and double-check your answers.


Multiple Choice (one or more answers)
Multiple choice are questions for which multiple potential answers are provided and where one or more of the answers are correct, and you must choose all that apply. For example:
Which of the following are types of SAP BW InfoCubes?

MultiCube
Inverted Cube
Remote Cube
Relational Cube
Basic Cube
Answer: a, c, and e.

These questions can be tricky. Although they often address the same type of definitions and facts as the simpler questions, the multiple-choice questions increase the possibility of mistakes. Rather than look for one or more obvious answers to these questions, you may find it useful to consider them as a series of true/false questions, evaluating each of the possible choices separately. Otherwise, it is easy to overlook a correct answer. Be sure to read these questions carefully.