Ten Years with MCSD

A few months ago, I downloaded my Microsoft Certified Professional Transcript. The significant portion is shown here:

Ten years ago today, I passed the SQL Server 7.0 exam—the final requirement for MCSD certification.

Remember SQL 7? That was back when none of us really knew whether Microsoft would be a serious player in the RDBMS space. I think we know the answer now.

We started building AdvancedMD using SQL 7, but migrated to SQL 2000 by the time we released. Today, we’re enjoying the T-SQL and data type benefits (think XML) of SQL 2005, and our DCO team is in the process of migrating our primary client database servers to SQL 2008. Combined with Windows Server 2008, it’s giving us some significant performance perks.

Back when I passed Exam 176, we were still basking in the glow of Windows NT 4.0, and the “Option Pack” (including MSMQ and MTS) that came out in 1998. (I started building on MSMQ when it was in beta testing in 1997.)

So…ten years since I passed any sort of Microsoft certification exam, and now I’m waxing nostalgic over a queueing system. I must be getting old…maybe it’s a good thing I’m not writing code any more!