I took a shot at new (to me) certification exam for BizTalk 2010. I was able to pass it without any preparation just based on the experience. That does not mean this exam is a very simple one. Comparing to previous (2006 R2) it covers some new areas (like WCF) and has some demanding questions and situation to think about. But the most challenging factor is broad feature coverage. Overall, the impression that if BizTalk continues to grow in scope it’s better to create separate exams for core functionality and extended features (like EDI, RFID, LOB adapters) because it’s really hard to cover vast array of BizTalk capabilities.
As far as required knowledge and questions allocation I think Microsoft description is on target. There were definitely more questions on deployment, configuration and administration aspects comparing to previous exam. WCF and WCF based adapters now play big role and this topic was covered well too. Extended functionality is claimed at 13% of the exam, I felt there were plenty of RFID questions but not many EDI, that’s why I thought it’d be useful to split exam into two to cover all of them equally. BRE is still there and good, cause it’s usually not very known/loved feature of the package.
At the and, for those who plan to get certified, my advice would be to know all those areas of BizTalk for guaranteed passing: messaging and orchestrations, core adapters, routing, patterns; development of all artifacts and orchestrations; debugging and exceptions handling; packaging, deployment, tracking and administration; WCF bindings and adapters; BAM, BRE, RFID, EDI, etc. You may get by not knowing one smaller non-essential part (like I did with RFID, for example). In such case you better know all other areas very well to cover for the weak spot. If there more than one whiteouts in the knowledge it’s good idea to study and prepare: MSDN, blogs, virtual labs and good VM to play with can help when experience is not enough. So best wishes and good skill to you in passing this certification!