Certifications and courses

Introduction

I have used some of my "in between job" time to study and learn more about the Microsoft stack and I participated in a course "Fact oriented Modelling" aka FOM aka FCO-IM and formerly known as NIAM. The certifications for Microsoft technology are more technical oriented and the other is more based on data- or information modelling about facts.

Microsoft certifications

Now, in the last month, I've studied for the following certifications:

• MCSA SQL Server 2016 Business intelligence development.
• MCSA SQL Server 2016 Database development.
• MCSA BI reporting.
• MCSE Data management and Analytics.
• Microsoft Certified - Azure fundamentals.

I've already earned the MCSA SQL server 2012/2014 a couple of years ago. The badges of the achieved certifications are shown in the picture, below. 

The MCSA certifications are based on on - premise knowledge but also Azure knowledge is required. The Azure fundamentals certification is based on exam AZ-900 and is an exam of basic knowledge of Azure.

Fact oriented modelling

Fact Oriented Modelling (FOM) is another area of interest. FOM is based on NIAM. FOM is focussed on conceptual modelling, logical modelling and about algoritmic way of deriving an ER model based.

FOM is not a very broadly used modelling methodology, but has some important aspects I have not seen before:

• It is based on the communication about things in the world around us and not based on the objects in it self, in contrast with what traditional modelling techniques prescribes like Codd and Chen. If nobody talks (verbal communication, reports, Excel, etc) about it, it is not important for modelling in data structures. That makes sense.
• It has a strong PDCA cyclus in conceptual modelling, logical modelling and physical modelling. From what we learn about communication, sentences are created (verbalization), a logical model and a physical model is designed. From the data that is present in the tables, we can recreate the sentences and show that to the users in order to verify that the model is properly created. That is PDCA in the data modelling! This is much more intuitive than normal ER modelling with the Normal Forms.

These are just some aspects of FOM I've learned. I'll blog about this topic in the future to show more aspects of FOM. 

Hennie