FEEDBACK : CECP Exam (Level 1) 4

[MJRBIM]

Wrote the CECP Exam (Level 1 - SACE200A) today.

Passing mark is 70%, and I FAILED with a 54%. So I got 27 questions right, out of 50...and that's after going back and reviewing all my answers before submitting them.

Like the CRCP exam - it's a computer-based exam with 50 random questions. They give you 85 minutes, but I was done in about 40. All the questions are text-based (you never touch or see and actual Cystal Enterprise CMC screen).

It's either multiple choice or "select all that apply" - and I found some of the questions on this exam even more strangely worded than on the CRCP exam.

Some sections that only had one choice - should have been "select all that apply" - in my opinion.

There were a number of questions like --

If we set-up our folders like XYZ, and wanted Group X to have these functions on Folder A, they should have..
VIEW
SCHEDULE
VIEW ON-DEMAND
FULL CONTROL.

I found the text of these questions badly phrased, and think I that I probably lost points on those - even though I ended up drawing out the folder structure to try to make sense of the text.

The questions were also specific to CE-10, and there were a number of questions about new object types - like programs, and how they function within CE that I wasn't well prepared for.

It guess I will take the "CE : Administering Users and Contents" course when I can schedule it, before taking this exam again.

Hopefully they use similar examples to the one's on the exams, so that I can learn the catch-phrases and examples that this exam seems to require.

If anyone else does the exams, please post your feedback.

 

[rhinok]

Thanks for posting your experience MJRBIM! I thought about just taking the exam, but was worried about the inclusion of CE10-specific content.

I'm scheduled to take all four courses within the next month (Business Views web-based, all others instructor-led).

I'll be happy to post my feedback.


~Kurt

 

[MJRBIM]

If you have got the extra $150 in your budget - I'd suggest trying the exam before the course - so that you know what items to focus on in class.

What dates/city are you doing the "CE : Administering Users and Contents" course? Most of the dates on-line don't have any current participants, and I don't want to book something that will be cancelled by BO...

 

[rhinok]

Unfortunately, I need to go through the whole approval process again to be reimbursed for the exams. Since I was approved for the classes, I'll wait to submit my request until June.

I'm enrolled in the following courses:

May 11-12 Columbus, OH - CE10: Administering Users and Content
May 13-14 Columbus, OH - CE10: Administering Servers
May 17-18 Columbus, OH - CE10: Designing and Deploying a Solution


~Kurt

 

[rhinok]

I've taken the first three courses. Following are my thoughts:[ol][li]All three courses were beneficial. Much of the material was simply a refresher for me, however, I did gain something from every class. This is especially true in regards to new functionality and/or metrics.[/li]

[li]The classes were designed for a broad audience. In each class, I had--by far--the most experience with CE. There were other individuals that had greater technical expertise overall, just not in CE. I was, for at least two classes, the only individual concerned with the Certification.[/li]

[li]The books had a variety of errors in the them, which made things difficult at times. In most cases, however, the instructors were aware of the errors and accounted for them.[/li]

[li]Since this was only the first or second time these courses have been taught, the training facility wasn't configured as it should have been. For example, every PC in the class was a PDC. This is fine for practicing how to set up Active Directory, but this makes some of the exercises difficult to follow due to logon issues across domains. Ideally, there should have been one domain in class for the students.[/li][/ol]

Comments regarding the specific classes:[ul][li]CE10: Administering Users and Content[ul][li]If you have experience administering Users/Content in previous versions, then this will primarily be a refresher course[/li][li]The course does include content in regards to new functionality[/li][li]The course includes a very good exercise on planning/creating a logical/functional security plan. FYI: The 'Crystal recommended' logical/functional model had a huge security flaw, but it is easier to set up and maintain, which is their point. ***[/li][/ul][/li]

[li]CE10: Administering Servers[ul][li]High level oveview of the general architecture and interaction between servers. Discusses the roles of each server[/li][li]Includes some break/fix activities, but not enough for advanced administrators. I would like to have had an extra day to break and fix the servers.[/li][li]Firewalls were discussed, but we didn't have any activities related to them. I would have liked to setup an environment with firewalls.[/li][/ul][/li]

[li]CE10: Deploying a solution[ul][li]The best course, in my opinion. The session I attended was the first one taught in the country. The concept of the course is for larger environments with distributed servers. The other content, however, makes this vital for any CE Administrator[/li][li]Refresher on the architecture[/li][li]Includes recommended server metrics (different from previous CE versions) and calculations for helping to size your environment. These are the same metrics from the sizing guide, but in a more comprehensive format.[/li][li]Discusses Fault Tolerance, Fail-over Support and Disaster Recovery options (even for single-server installs)[/li][li]Course contains a great exercise on sizing and setting up a large, multi-site environment[/li][li]There's a good activity where we set up a 5 server environment in class, which included some fault-tolerance/fail-over support[/li][li]I really wanted an extra day so that we could size and set up many multiple server environments.[/li][/ul][/li][/ul]

***Recommended Logical/Functional Plan

Crystal/BO recommends that you set up Logical user groups based on your logical folder structure (folders by department or content, for example). Then, Crystal/BO recommends that you set up Functional user groups by security role (Administrators, View-on-Demand and Schedule). The idea is that users will be assigned into Logical groups based on their department and into Functional Groups based on their role (managers might be assigned into the 'Schedule' functional group, while employees would assigned into 'View'. In a well-designed plan, members of 'Schedule' would only see folders and reports to which they have access through their Logical Groups. The flaw is that they can simply search for any report and schedule it, regardless of their logical group.

In the above example, members of the regional sales groups can't see the other regional sales groups, because the master Sales Group (to which they all belong) has been given 'no access'. If a member of 'Sales AP' is also part of the 'Schedule' group, however, then that member can search for a Sales NA report by name. If a member of an unrelated group (Finance, for example) is also part of 'Schedule', then that member can search by name, as well. While this is unlikely, it is a security problem.



~Kurt

 

[MJRBIM]

Kurt :

We are bring BO on-site to do these three courses for 6 IT staffers in mid-July.

Your feedback is really useful.

Thanks!

 

[700503]

Dear all,
Just a stupid question. Where can I find out the exam. schedule/location? I am in Hong Kong. Any exam in HK?

Many Thanks

 

[bdreed35]

700503:

You can go here:

http://www.businessobjects.com/services/training/courses.asp

to find out training availability.


~Brian

 

[gharing]

Were there any questions related to the sizing information? Do they really expect you to memorize that stuff?

Thanks in advance -

Greg

 

[knerve]

I took the test yesterday and recieved a 58% and FAILED! I cannot believe it. There were questions on where to go to orientate text, which tabs it is on etc. I suggest going through the entire application and memorizing what is on what tab. Another point of failure for me was charts. You must know what is on every tab within the chart expert. It is not testing you on reporting but on your memorization of the tool and where everything is. I plan to take it again but after studying the above thoroughly. Of course the questions are random but now I know what to expect. I had just taken the ACE exam and it had more reporting credibility than this exam.

Kelly

 

[MJRBIM]

knerve -

Did you take the CECP Exam for Crystal Enterprise, or the CRCP exam for Crystal Reports?

 

[MJRBIM]

rhinok -

We just completed the following courses in-house with a BO Trainer.

CE10: Administering Users and Content
CE10: Administering Servers
CE10: Designing and Deploying a Solution

We compressed the 6-days of classes into a 5-day week. We found all the same flaws in the Training Guides that you mentioned, and they are still teaching the "non-security" Security model that you detailed above.

All in all the class was well worth it, I think that I am ready to retake the first exam, and the second one also...but will want to probably do the stand-alone Business Views course before I do the third and final exam for CECP.

Did you do your CECP exams after the Columbus training? If so, how did it go...?

 

[rhinok]

I haven't actually taken the exams yet - it's a matter of timing with our quarterly training budget. I would recommend taking the instructor-led Business Views course, however. I was very disappointed with the WBT for a variety of reasons:[ol][li]The material was remedial at best - it only covered the mechanics of the physical tool. I would have preferred learning about the nuances of using Business Views. I really felt like the course was written to the lowest common denominator, which doesn't make sense for a true certification, but does from a financial standpoint[/li][li]You don't get any source material other than about 14 pages of downloadable .pdf files[/li][li]You don't get a Certificate of Completion - this causes problems with my work, where I have to have a certificate to get credit for taking the course.[/li][/ol]


~Kurt

 

[techie2]

Hi,

Passing score is 70%, passed with 78% and there were total 55 Questions.

Some questions were really confusing at the extent that I had to pick the best answer. For some questions, you need to use common sense. Be thorough with CE, not in detail though, but you must know all the features and general useability of them.

Couple of very small topics in CE I am going to list which is going to make atleast 8-10 questions, though not writing the actual questions:

Crystal Applications -> Web Desktop
Crystal Applications -> CMC
Crystal Reports Summary
Crystal Reports Select Expert
Publishing Reports
Crystal Enterprise Web Desktop

Last but not the least, some questions are going to be so basic and easy.

Hope this helps and best of luck.

V

 

[MJRBIM]

Re-wrote the CECP Exam (Level 1 - SACE200A) today - second attempt, after taking the SA200 "CE10: Administering Users and Content" course with a BO trainer last week

Passing mark is 70%, and I FAILED (again) with a 65%.

Based on feedback from other Tek-Tipers and the trainer, I took almost the full 80 minutes and commented all the questions that I thought were badly phrased or inacurrate.

I intend to contest my exam result with BO - I will keep you posted.

 

[rhinok]

Wow:-( Good luck, MJRBIM

~Kurt

 

[StephenEclectic]

Just sat Exam 1 of the CECP.

Passed 72% (phew).

The exam is split about 60/40 CR/CE. I would advise for the CR part of the exam to purchase the exam guide (RDCR200a) from

http://www.examhints.com.

They were great, and gives you an idea of the terminology used in the exams.

Some of the questions were worded poorly and I sent comment back to the examiners to say this. Hopefully they will improve the wording in future exams if we all do this.

Main tips from me are :

1. Know CR inside out and back to front. Remember that there is more than one way to do something, so click ALL that apply. Know all functions and all tabs in CR. Know the design environment too.

2. CE - Know about RIGHTS. The exam question on rights for a folder was murder ! See rhinok's post about the logicl/functional plan, because you will have to draw one of these in the exam to answer the questions. Very Very important - makes up 5 or 6 questions.

3. CE - 3rd Party Accounts.
4. CE - Programs
5. CE - General Functions
6. CE - Architecure and what all servers do.

Note: Not too much detail needed for CE. That is they wont ask you what tab you use for this or what tab you use for the next thing (like they do for CR) but know ALL the functionality.

Good luck with it. Thanks for all the tips guys - helped me focus my study !

 

[StephenEclectic]

ONE MORE TIP

Review your answers and again and again and again until the time is up.the

I noticed 2 or 3 mistakes I had made, which turned out to be be the different between pass and fail !

 

[StephenEclectic]

Seems I'm the only one posting to this forum now ... prob not worth my while ... anyways ...

Just sat Exam 2 of the CECP. Pass mark was 75% and I got 72%. Missed out by the smallest of margins. Gutted :-(

Just to give you guys some tips on what to study for the exam for help in the future:

- Lesson 3 of the Book SA300.
This stuff came up alot. Configuring servers to work with Java for instance came up. I think this whole chapter is pretty much covers around 10 questions in the exam. Know the architecture like the back of you hand.

- Firewalls.
Not specifically firewalls, but know how to configure configure the Web Connector and WCS using the command line in the CCM. Know specifically about -ns, -port, -request port. Id advise you to look at the Administrators guide for Crystal Enterprise available in PDF from BO as it explains the stuff better than the manuals.

- Servers
Know what each server's job is, and more specifically know how the CE System would be affected if the server went down. For instance what CE functionality would be affected if the Input FRS went down, and what functionality could you still use.

- Migration
Know about how to migrate from one CMS database to another.

- Clustering
Specifically asked in the exam was the pre-requisits for clustering found on page 4-14 of SA300.

- CMC
Know all the options on the Properties tabs and what they do.

- CCM
Know what you can edit for each Configuration tab on the Servers

- Web Connector
Know what this does and When you need to use it. For example in specifying where the CSP code is if you moved it.

I am going to sit the exam quite soon so I will update the forum afterwards if any new content appears.

 

[Maximizer]

Greetings! You may be the only one posting to this forum; but WE'RE ALL LISTENING!!!

Much thanks

James Keep, A.C.E.
Crystal Reports(tm) Certified Consultant 8.5 (CRCC)
CMRC
Crystal Decisions Business Partner
Montreal, Qc, Canada

http://www.cmrc.qc.ca