Salesforce CTA Part 2 Exam - Study Materials

A number of people have followed up with me after my earlier post on the exam about what are some of the study materials I used to prepare for the exam. To be perfectly honest, I didn't get a chance to read and review everything that I wanted to before taking the exam but I have been gathering a lot of reference material over time which I regularly reviewed and it helped when preparing for the exam. Most of them are presentations from Dreamforce '12 sessions which are available from the Salesforce Channel in YouTube and the rest are mostly articles or blogs on the developerforce.com site.

I grouped the materials into a few general areas which I think are very essential. These include (in no particular order of importance):

• Force.com Platform
• Platform Security
• Integration
• Large Data Volume Considerations
• Single vs Multi-Org Strategy
• Force.com Development
• Deployment and Governance 

Again, these are just a few of the important topic areas and you should refer to the objectives in the Study Guide for the complete list.

I would highly recommend starting with this video from Dreamforce '12 which provides a good discussion around what is involved in getting the Technical Architect Certification.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2fOP7MKb6A

Force.com Platform:

The Force.com Multitenant Architecture
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Multi_Tenant_Architecture

Understanding Force.com Platform Internals Helps You Build Better Apps
http://blogs.developerforce.com/engineering/2013/04/understanding-force-com-platform-internals-helps-you-build-better-apps.html

Record-Level Access: Under the Hood
http://www.salesforce.com/docs/en/cce/record_access_uth/salesforce_record_access_under_the_hood.pdf

Designing Record Access for Enterprise Scale
http://www.salesforce.com/docs/en/cce/draes/draes.pdf

Platform Security:

Security Implementation Guide
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/securityImplGuide/index.htm

A Guide to Sharing Architecture
https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/sharing_architecture.pdf

Taking a Pragmatic Look at the Salesforce Security Model

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpoaRryUpmA

Security & Sharing Overview - You Hold the Keys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsX6mah9oKc

Managing the Role Hierarchy at Enterprise Scale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLXbt34cobg

Single Sign-On Best Practices
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qTr4ulS-WU

Single Sign On with SAML
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Single_Sign-On_with_SAML_on_Force.com

OAuth the Big Picture
http://info.apigee.com/Portals/62317/docs/oauth_big_picture.pdf

Digging Deeper into OAuth 2.0 on Force.com
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Digging_Deeper_into_OAuth_2.0_on_Force.com

Single Sign-On for Desktop and Mobile Applications using SAML and OAuth
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Single_Sign-On_for_Desktop_and_Mobile_Applications_using_SAML_and_OAuth

You need to know all the OAuth and SAML flows in detail -- this is a MUST!

Integration:

Integration Wiki Page
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Integration

Integrating with the Force.com Platform

http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Integrating_with_the_Force.com_Platform

Integration Patterns and Practices

http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Integration_Patterns_and_Practices

Architecting Successful Integrations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR-xPQSPNUM&list=PLB340118F5BD0F93E&index=8

Choosing the Right Integration Strategy for Force.com (Dreamforce 2012)

http://events.developerforce.com/conference/dreamforce?session=7601

Large Data Volume Considerations:

Large Data Volume Deployments - Best Practices
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgNlTMrox7g

Managing Large Data Volumes - Best Practices for Data Efficiency
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrBqGkTBxMI

Extreme Salesforce Data Volumes
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Webinar:_Extreme_Salesforce_Data_Volumes_(2013-Feb)

Database Query and Search Optimization Cheat Sheet
http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc-wiki/en/images/0/0e/Db-query-search-optimization-cheat-sheet.pdf

Best Practices for Deployments with Large Data Volumes:
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Best_Practices_for_Deployments_with_Large_Data_Volumes

Designing Dashboards and Reports for Force.com Implementations with Large Data Volumes
http://blogs.developerforce.com/engineering/2013/08/designing-dashboards-and-reports-for-force-com-implementations-with-large-data-volumes.html

Architect Salesforce Record Ownership Skew for Peak Performance in Large Data Volume Environments
http://blogs.developerforce.com/engineering/2012/06/architect-salesforce-record-ownership-skew-for-peak-performance-in-large-data-volume-environments.html

Reducing Lock Contention by Avoiding Account Data Skew
http://blogs.developerforce.com/engineering/2013/01/reducing-lock-contention-by-avoiding-account-data-skews.html

Working with Very Large SOQL Queries
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/langCon_apex_SOQL_VLSQ.htm

Webinar: Inside the Force.com Query Optimizer
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Webinar:_Inside_the_Force.com_Query_Optimizer_(2013-Apr)

Maximizing the Performance of Force.com SOQL, Reports, and List Views
http://blogs.developerforce.com/engineering/2013/07/maximizing-the-performance-of-force-com-soql-reports-and-list-views.html

Single vs Multi-Org Strategy:

Why Single Org?
- 360 degree view and reporting
- Global forecasting
- Up-sell and cross-sell
- Collaboration
- Standardize Processes
- Support

Why Multi-Org?
- Legacy
- multiple businesses acquired through acquisitions
- Independent Business Units
- business units run independently of each other
- Functional
- different business processes - hr and sales
- Legal
- tax laws, compliance
- Org Limits
- salesforce governor limits, workflow, dashboard number limits
- Geographic/Language
- different regions are autonomous (US/ EMEA)

Single or Multi-org: What's Right for My Deployment?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QS6Je2PsI0

What is the Right Org Architecture Strategy for your Enterprise?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZoUNb2OMfs

Thinking Differently about Orgs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sGgCXf8NDs

Force.com Development:

Salesforce Development Lifecycle Guide
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dev_lifecycle/salesforce_development_lifecycle.pdf

Triggers and Order of Execution
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_triggers_order_of_execution.htm

Apex Design Patterns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J372XmYds-A

Applying Enterprise Application Design Patterns on Force.com
http://www.slideshare.net/afawcett/df12-applying-enterprise-application-design-patterns-on-forcecom

Deploying Salesforce Globally
http://www.slideshare.net/Salesforce/deploying-salesforce-globally

Deployment and Governance:

Continuous Delivery with Force.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeG5SonUuA8

Release Management for Large Organizations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3YeKq00a8I

Agile Release Management in a Large Enterprise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp8mgPQNOwg

Change and Release Management: Developing A Plan That Works For You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czLxAa7XkS4

Performance Monitoring and Testing the Salesforce Cloud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Jja81xxkE

As you can tell from just looking at the titles, even if you are not planning to take the exam any time soon, reviewing these materials in detail will give you a much better insight into the force.com platform and it's capabilities. Good luck!

Salesforce Certified Technical Architect - Part 2 Exam

This weekend I cleared the Salesforce Technical Architect certification part 2 exam and wanted to share my experience along with some tips and tricks. First of all, it's a great exam to take because of the breadth and depth of topics covered. As a technical architect you work on a number of areas over the years such as requirements gap analysis, technical architecture, design and development, deployments, data migrations, performance tuning and troubleshooting, SSO, Web Services, SSL, firewalls, etc. and in preparing for the exam you will need to recollect a lot of that experience and something like remembering the difference between 2nd and 3rd normal forms can come in quite handy (if you are wondering what are "normal forms", then you have some studying to do :) 

Now, if you are just starting to prepare then the first place to look of course is the official Study Guide and especially Section 5: Recommended Training and References. One of the first things recommended there is the Dev 401 training and if you are pursuing the Architect certification you must have cleared the Dev 401 exam and should be well aware of the basics anyway. If you happen to be Dev 501 certified (or trained) it's certainly beneficial but you don't have to be and having hands-on experience working with Apex and Visualforce will do just fine. Integration is another key area and the Dev 502 training I'm sure is quite useful but you can also refer to the online documentation and get enough information. Again, hands-on experience is a must because there were several questions around integration that required a lot of thought to answer. The rest of the resources refer to either online courses, webinars or technical articles - all of which are very good to know and highly recommended. 

The next section in the guide - Section 6: Exam Outline - is IMO the most important section that you need to focus on. If you can read through the objectives and feel like yeah ok I get this, then you are in good shape. If you are not aware of some of the concepts, then try to focus on those depending on how much weight is assigned. For example a fourth of the exam is about Platform Architecture concepts - which means you should know about a broad range of concepts and details around Salesforce and force.com Platform, such as how force.com multi-tenant architecture works, what are the different types of licenses and their nuances, the differences between going with a single-org or multi-org strategy, large data volume considerations, i18n capabilities, etc. If you have read through this section of the guide, my recommendation is, please re-read it and make sure you understand _every_ one of the objectives. 

The exam is 60 questions, multiple choice and you have two hours to complete. Most of the questions are quite long (6-8 sentences) and for a majority of them you have to choose 2 or 3 correct options out of 5. I would say the questions where you have to choose 3 correct answers are relatively easy compared to the ones where you had 2 correct choices because it is easier to eliminate the two wrong ones than to pick two right ones. A good number of them required re-reading the question and choices several (>3) times, the rest I was able to get through mostly in one speed reading (or two). I was stumped on very few (say 3 or 4) because they were quite specific and I just didn't know the answer and ended up guessing (I checked them after I got home and sure enough I had them all wrong :) 

Also you have to keep an eye on the clock because time just flies. I got through only about 7 or 8 questions in the first 25 minutes (ramp up time I guess!) but still managed to finish the exam with around 15 mins to spare and review some answers. So the key is if you have to re-read a question and still can't figure out the choices its best to just mark it for review and come back to it at the end. Otherwise you might miss out on some easy ones. The other thing is when you are stuck between two choices the answer is usually based on one or two key words in the question so you might have to just review it quickly again. Also be sure to read ALL the choices (especially for the one or two correct choices) as there can be subtle differences in the choices. I say this because I didn't find any question to be ambiguous and felt pretty comfortable with my answer choices after I reviewed them. Overall it was a good experience and wasn't as bad as I had expected. 

Good luck with the preparation!

UPDATE: Refer to the follow up post for references to the study materials.