The Microsoft 70-463 certification exam validates the candidates’ skills and knowledge in the administrator and development of enterprise scale data solutions in on-premises and in cloud environments. This test is designed to evaluate one’s ability to implement programming and database objects. It also tests your capability to optimize and troubleshoot queries, databases objects, and design databases. Besides, it checks the capacity to develop optimization and troubleshooting solutions, structure, and security. Note that the 70-463 exam is the last of the three tests (70-461 and 70-462) to receive the MCSA: SQL Server 2012/2014 certification. Those candidates who pass all three exams can also earn credits towards the MCP, MCSE, MCSA certificates and will enhance their opportunity to take up job roles as a database analyst or a database designer.

The professionals taking the Microsoft 70-463 exam must have the capacity to complete certain technical tasks. According to Microsoft, the candidates for this test must have the relevant skills and knowledge in designing and implementing data warehouse; building data quality solutions; extracting and transferring data; creating database objects; loading data; and configuring and deploying SSIS solutions. It is important to mark that each of these skills has specific percentage that correlates with the weight of questions that may be expected from each area. The test takers are advised to go through the certification page to learn the details of the skill areas before starting their exam preparation. The main focus of the test is the implementation of different data warehouse with dimensions and fact tables. The individuals should also be conversant with SSIS packages and data quality solutions. Microsoft 70-463 is aimed at those data warehouse developers who are involved in the Business Intelligence (BI) solutions development with primary roles of extracting and transforming load, data warehouse execution, and data cleansing.

There are numerous resources available for the Microsoft 70-463 exam preparation, and they can be found on the Microsoft website. In addition, some information pertaining to the exam, such as fee, available languages, testing center, test requirements and policies, as well as exam details and topics can be found on the official certification page of the test.