Exam 70-463: Implementing a Data Warehouse with

Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014 – Skills Measured

Audience Profile
This exam is primarily intended for ETL and data warehouse developers who create Business
Intelligence (BI) solutions, and whose responsibilities include data cleansing, and Extract
Transform Load and data warehouse implementation.

Skills Measured

NOTE: The bullets that appear below each of the skills measured are intended to illustrate how
we are assessing that skill. This list is not definitive or exhaustive.

NOTE: In most cases, exams do NOT cover preview features, and some features will only be
added to an exam when they are GA (General Availability).

Design and implement a data warehouse (10–15%)

Design and implement dimensions

 design shared/conformed dimensions; determine if you need support for slowly

changing dimensions; determine attributes; design hierarchies; determine whether you
need star or snowflake schema; determine the granularity of relationship with fact tables;
determine the need for auditing or lineage; determine keys (business transactional or
your own data warehouse/surrogate keys); implement dimensions; implement data
lineage of a dimension table

Design and implement fact tables

 design a data warehouse that supports many to many relationships; appropriately index
a fact table; using columnstore indexes; partitioning; additive measures; semi additive
measures; non additive measures; implement fact tables; determining the loading
method for the fact tables; implement data lineage of a fact table; design summary
aggregation tables

Extract and transform data (20–25%)

Define connection managers
  plan the configuration of connection managers; package level or project level connection
manager; define a connection string; parameterization of connection strings

Design data flow

 define data sources and destinations; distinguish blocking and non-blocking

transformations; use different methods to pull out changed data from data sources;
determine appropriate data flow components; determine the need for supporting Slowly
Changing Dimensions (SCD); determine whether to use SQL Joins or SSIS lookup or
merge join transformations; batch processing versus row by row processing; determine
the appropriate transform to use for a specific task; determine the need and method for
identity mapping and deduplicating; fuzzy lookup, fuzzy grouping and Data Quality
Services (DQS) transformation; determine the need for custom data sources,
destinations, and transforms; determine what to do with erroneous rows; determine
auditing needs; trusted/authoritative data sources, including warehouse metadata;
extracting only changed rows

Implement data flow

 debug data flow; use the appropriate data flow components; SQL / SSIS data
transformation; create SSIS packages that support slowly changing dimensions; use the
lookup task in SSIS; map identities using SSIS fuzzy lookup (advanced); specify a data
source and destination; use data flows; different categories of transformations; read,
transform and load data; understand which transforms to use to accomplish a specific
business task; data correction transformation; performance tune an SSIS dataflow;
optimize Integration Services packages for speed of execution; maintain data integrity,
including good data flow

Manage SSIS package execution

 schedule package execution by using SQL Server Agent; execute packages by using
DTEXEC; execute packages by using SQL Server Management Studio; implement package
execution; plan and design package execution strategy; use PowerShell to execute script;
monitor the execution using Management Studio; use DTEXECUI; ETL restartability

Implement script tasks in SSIS

 determine if it is appropriate to use a script task; extending the capability of a control

flow; perform a custom action as needed (not on every row) during a control flow

Load data (25–30%)

Design control flow
  determine control flow; determine containers and tasks needed; determine precedence
constraints; design an SSIS package strategy with rollback, staging and transaction
control; decide between one package or multiple packages; determine event handlers;
determine variables; determine parameters on package and project level; determine
connection managers and whether they are package or project level; determine the need
for custom tasks; determine how much information you need to log from a package;
determine the need for checkpoints; determine security needs

Implement package logic by using SSIS variables and parameters

 user variables; variable scope, data type; implement parameterization of properties using
variables; using variables in precedence constraints; referring to SSIS system variables;
design dynamic SSIS packages; package configurations (file or SQL tables); expressions;
package and project parameters; project level connection managers; variables;
implement dynamic package behavior; configure packages in SSIS for different
environments, package configurations (xmlconfiguration file, SQLServer table, registry
entry; parent package variables, environment variable); parameters (package and project
level); project connection managers; property expressions (use expressions for
connection managers)

Implement control flow

 checkpoints; debug control flow; implement the appropriate control flow task to solve a
problem; data profiling; use sequence containers and loop containers; manage
transactions in SSIS packages; managing parallelism; using precedence constraint to
control task execution sequence; creating package templates; using the execute package
task

Implement data load options

 implement a full and incremental data load strategy; plan for an incremental update of
the relational Data Mart; plan for loads into indexed tables; configure appropriate bulk
load options; select an appropriate load technique (SSIS Destination versus T-SQL) and
load partitioned tables

Implement script components in SSIS

 create an SSIS package that handles SCD Type 2 changes without using the SCD
component; work with script component in SSIS; deciding when it is appropriate to use a
script component versus a built in; source, transformation, destination component; use
cases: web service source and destination, getting the error message

Configure and deploy SSIS solutions (20–25%)

Troubleshoot data integration issues

 performance issues; connectivity issues; execution of a task or transformation failed; logic

issues; demonstrate awareness of the new SSIS logging infrastructure; troubleshoot a
failed package execution to determine the root cause of failure; troubleshoot SSIS
package failure from an invalid datatype; implement break points; data viewers; profile
data with different tools; batch cleanup

Install and maintain SSIS components

 software installation (IS, management tools); development box and server; install
specifics for remote package execution; planning for installation (32- versus 64-bit);
upgrade; provisioning the accounts; creating the catalog

Implement auditing, logging, and event handling

 audit package execution by using system variables; propagate events; use log providers;
log an SSIS execution; create alerting and notification mechanisms; use Event Handlers in
SSIS to track ETL events and errors; implement custom logging

Deploy SSIS solutions

 create and configure an SSIS catalog; deploy SSIS packages by using the deployment
utility; deploy SSIS packages to SQL or file system locations; validate deployed packages;
deploy packages on multiple servers; how to install custom components and tasks;
deploy SSIS packages by using DTUTIL

Configure SSIS security settings

 SSIS catalog database roles; package protection levels; secure Integration Services
packages that are deployed at the file system; secure Integration Services parameters,
configuration

Build data quality solutions (15–20%)

Install and maintain data quality services

 installation prerequisites; .msi package; adding users to the DQ roles; identity analysis,
including data governance

Implement master data management solutions

 install Master Data Services (MDS); implement MDS; create models, entities, hierarchies,
collections, attributes; define security roles; import/export; subscriptions
Create a data quality project to clean data

 profile Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) and other source systems; data quality
knowledge base management; create data quality project; use data quality client;
improve data quality; identity mapping and deduplicating; handle history and data
quality; manage data quality/cleansing