Monday, May 18, 2015

My experience with TOGAF certification

I got TOGAF 9.1 certification recently and thought about sharing my experience with the folks aspiring for TOGAF certification. You may find the TOGAF links provided in this blog helpful. Please feel free to leave your feedback/comments.

Why TOGAF certification?:

I worked as 'Application Architect' for the client which happens to be one of the biggest insurance companies in US. I got a chance to work in one of their key projects that required us to develop the architecture for their Claim division. We analyzed all the industry standard architecture frameworks and found TOGAF most suitable probably because it is built on open standards and flexible enough to be customized. TOGAF's ADM and its rich content framework came handy for successful completion of the project. Ever since, I wanted to obtain TOGAF certification.

Exam Structure:

In order to get TOGAF certified, following two exams needs to be passed:
1) Part1 (TOGAF Foundation) Exam: This exam comprises 40 questions in multiple choice format. Exam duration is 60 min and pass mark is 55%.
2) Part2 (TOGAF Certified) Exam: This exam comprises 8 scenario based questions. Exam duration is 90 min and pass mark is 60%.

Above exams can be taken together or separately. However, passing Part1 exam is pre-requirement for Part2 exam. I took Part1 and Part2 exams together.

How long does it take to prepare for the exam?:

It depends on individual's learning speed and prior experience with the TOGAF. I had the hands-on experience with TOGAF and still it took around 10 weeks of preparation. I went for self-study, but instructor led training is available for this exam. I will suggest to first go through the exam requirements and study materials before making a decision to book the exam date through Prometric. However, good thing is that the exam can be rescheduled without paying any fee if done at least 7 days prior to the exam date (more details on http://www.opengroup.org/togaf/cert/docs/TOGAF_Certification_Agreement.html).

Strategy to crack the exam:

Study guide (find the link below) for Part1 seems to be enough to pass that exam. However, Part2 exam is tricky and requires the application of TOGAF knowledge in solving the complex scenarios encountered by Enterprise Architects. This exam requires the in-depth knowledge of TOGAF and lot of practice to use the knowledge in TOGAF way. Study guide comes with few practice exams. Practice exams are available on the web also.

Important Links:

Below are the important links related to TOGAF (Current Version is 9.1) certification:

  • TOGAF Home Page:
  • TOGAF Certification site (Provides the idea that the certification requires part1 and part2 to be completed, separately or together):
  • Study Guide for Part 1 (Foundation) and Part 2 exams:
  • Exam Requirements:
  • To Schedule the exam:
  • TOGAF Standard:

Monday, May 26, 2014

Well, blogging to me is sharing information and inviting the feedback from the readers of my blog. If you are new to SAP Java development then this blog may be helpful. However, the details on the development process is not in the scope of this blog. Recently, I was assigned the task to enhance the Biller Direct application which comes as out of box solution from SAP.

I am a consultant and most of the time I have travelling assignment. Oh yes, I am 3-4-5 consultant. Well, with new assignment, my client location , role, business domain and often technology domain also changes. So, when I got assignment to work on SAP product, I was not surprised or intimidated. I learnt over the period of time to quickly accustom myself to client's processes and quickly learn (if required) the technologies required for the project. This is the best take home skill I developed while working as consultant.

On a fateful Monday morning, I traveled more than 1000 miles to start the work on my new assignment.On very first day,  I met with the project manager who told me that I am the in-charge of that enhancement as nobody in the team had any technical knowledge about Biller Direct application. So, I could not have expected much help from the team.

 As most of us will do, I started Googling about the Biller Direct Application. SAP SCN provides useful articles on all aspects of the development process. Frankly, the information that I got was often in bits and pieces. Putting together all the information was a bit difficult. I could not get any design document for the Biller Direct application. So, the reverse engineering  was required to understand the design of the application. However, getting the source code became a big challenge for us. We all came to the conclusion that setting up the NWDI is the only solution.

 I first learnt about the SAP Netweaver platform which serves as the integration platform. Below are the components of the Netweaver platform :
a) Enterprise Portal (EP)
b) Business Intelligence (BI)
c) Mobile Infrastructure (MI)
d) Process Integration (PI)
e) Development Infrastructure (DI)

For the SAP developers, DI aka NWDI is the key. It has the following component as well:
i) SAP Netweaver Developer Studio (NWDS)
ii) Design Time Repository (DTR)
iii) Component Build Service (CBS)
iv) Change Management Service (CMS).

NWDI should be setup before the development can start. NWDS is built at the top of Eclipse and serves as the IDE for the Java development. It provides the ability to pull the code from the code repository (DTR), perform check-in/check-out (through CBS) of the modified files, deployment to the Application Server, debug the local/remote java applications etc.

One more important thing to remember is that the applications provided by SAP follows the component model(http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwce72/helpdata/en/49/11db65cf292810e10000000a42189c/content.htm) and hence like other applications, Biller Direct application is also made up of the component (called DC).

Understanding NWDI is key to perform any Java development on SAP platform. I could finish the project in around three months and those three months were very eventful. Time to do something new now.