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SAS Warehouse Architect Concepts Exam
This exam will retire on December 31, 2008. A new exam will be offered in this track and will focus on SAS Data Integration Technology. Anticipated exam release date early 2009.Audience
Successful candidates for the SAS Certified Warehouse Architect should have detailed knowledge in the development of information architecture and communicating the design to the customer, the construction team and all other designated parties. They have a working knowledge in gathering requirements, designing, implementing, testing, and deploying data warehouse solutions. Practical experience includes work in data modeling, systems analysis, process modeling, system architecture, data storage systems, system development life cycle, and Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) procedures.In addition, SAS Certified Warehouse Architects must have knowledge of SAS technologies in data warehousing and exploitation, along with their application to data warehouse design, including the specific body of knowledge and understanding of the SAS Rapid Warehousing Methodology and warehousing best practices.
Test Content
Assessment and Analysis- Provide input into the definition of the project specifications (e.g. human resources, initial cost estimate, risk assessment, project definition, objectives, timelines, prerequisites) by gathering high-level information from the customer using techniques such as interviews, past documents, and workshops in order to scope the project content and phases, develop the project initiation document, and obtain customer agreement to proceed.
- Assess the current environment (human resources, software, hardware, and procedures) in order to establish the capacity and resource constraints by analyzing the current customer infrastructure.
- Identify the business processes, business rules, business/industry standards, and their interdependencies in order to facilitate the warehouse design.
- Define the operational requirements by conducting detailed needs analysis in order to specify what the system should do.
- Define acceptance test plan by using the given customer's requirements in order to confirm to customer that requirements have been met and to obtain customer signoff.
- Assess the systems of record in order to evaluate the availability, fitness for use, conformance to business rules, and completeness of the data by identifying the source of each target data item and investigating its content and associated business rules.
- Define the subject model in order to set the context and to define the scope of the project by using business information gathered from the customer.
- Define the logical model in order to represent the data to meet the exploitation requirements, user access profiles, specific objectives for the build, security requirements, and other known requirements by identifying data components and establishing their relationships.
- Define the physical model in order to store data by assessing risk associated with potentially feasible models and using the logical model, exploitation requirements, user access profiles, specific objectives for the build, security requirements, and performance requirements and other known requirements.
- Determine the target data volume in order to check feasibility and scalability of the data model given the technological and budgetary constraints.
- Optimize the physical model by using performance improvement techniques in order to satisfy the acceptance requirements.
- Define the metadata management architecture by choosing the appropriate technologies and documenting high-level processes in order to provide sustainability and increase usability of the warehouse.
- Define the architecture for the extract, transform and load (ETL) processes in order to meet the requirements by defining the technologies and high-level processes that are consistent with the business rules and environmental and technical constraints.
- Define the maintenance architecture in order to ensure sustainability of the warehouse by defining high-level processes that incorporate structured and formal change management.
- Define the exploitation architecture and high-level processes by identifying technology integration points and using the given requirements in order to deliver information to the designated user community using the most appropriate channel.
- Define the desired environment (human resources and skills, software, hardware, and procedures) and conduct a gap analysis in order to meet requirements and support the implementation of the warehouse by choosing the appropriate technology and performing capacity planning.
- Define the high-level testing strategy in order to provide direction for developing the detailed system, integration and regression test plan (e.g. Extract, Transform, Load (ETL), exploitation, maintenance, deployment, performance) by specifying the test environment and the roles of those involved.