I took the IBM Lotus Notes Domino Application Development Update Exam for Lotus Notes/Domino 7 this morning, and aced it! Since I also aced the Notes 6 Application Development Update exam four years ago, I now need to keep this streak of perfection going when I take the Notes 8 App Dev Update exam next year.

Why next year? Well, I essentially spent the last month and a half preparing for this exam, and I need a break. I also need to spend time on some other projects that have been on hold until I crossed off this item from my to do list.

To prep for this exam, I purchased the practice test from Self Test Software. I printed out all of the Flash Cards (except for those pertaining to DB2) and went through them several times. I also printed out the What's new in Domino Designer 7? documentation in the Lotus Domino Designer Help file and read that several times. Of all the new development topics, the ones that were hardest for me to retain were the new DXL methods and properties (CreateElementNodeNS, SetElementNodeNS...ugh!) and the elements in a WSDL file (<service>, <portType>, <binding>, etc.) I spent most of my time this week reviewing those topics to make sure I had them nailed down. For some advice on how you can prepare for this exam, click on the "Read More..." link below.

Now that I don't need to worry about upgrading my Notes certification for a while, I'm curious as to how many Lotus professionals still keep their certifications up-to-date. I used to hear about people getting their Notes R4 and R5 back in the day, but starting with LND6 I don't hear about it so much. Am I part of a dying breed who still feels that certifications, particularly Lotus certifications, are important?



Here's what I recommend for anyone out there who has yet to take it:

• Be sure you're familiar with how to do things in designer from the menu bar, like Create - Insert Shared Column, File - Close all open window tabs, etc.
• You need to know where to access Shared Columns and Web Services in the Design Pane.
• There were a lot of questions on shared columns. The "Creating a shared column" in the Lotus Domino Designer Help database goes over all of the particulars very well.
• I highly recommend profiling an agent in Eclipse. Not that you'll have any questions on the Eclipse aspect of the task, but it will help reinforce the settings you will need to change in order for profiling to work.
• I was asked about the new sticky column changes in Domino Designer.
• I got a question on ApproveHostedOrgStorageDeletion. The only way I knew the correct answer was that I knew how this method was spelled. I still don't understand what it actually does!
• I think I got three questions on @Command([DiscoverFolders]). Definitely read the help doco on that.
• I didn't get a single question on anything DB2-related, not even @DB2Shema or @IsDB2.
• I didn't get any questions on DDM.

1. Mike 10/21/2008 05:25:02 PM

I upgraded to 7 last year at Lotusphere2008 and plan on upgrading to 8 there this year.

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