A friend of mine just got back from TechMentor where they announced a new high-level MS certification called the Microsoft Certified Architect. This new cert will be the expert of experts, and will be very hard to obtain. Persons wishing to test will submit an application to MS with their experience and if accepted, will go before a live panel of experts and asked questions. To my knowledge, this is the only exa A friend of mine just got back from TechMentor where they announced a new high-level MS certification called the Microsoft Certified Architect. This new cert will be the expert of experts, and will be very hard to obtain. Persons wishing to test will submit an application to MS with their experience and if accepted, will go before a live panel of experts and asked questions. To my knowledge, this is the only exam. Those of you who know me know that the state of certification is one of my hot buttons. We need drastic certification reform to keep the Exam Crams, and the Cheat Sheets out of the business. I know so many developers and clueless managers that have my same certs it completely invalidates the work I put into getting them. And it cheapens every MCDBA on the planet.What we need is something like this for DBAs. The MCDBA is a fine cert, but what we need is a true master-level certification that you can’t cheat on, and that you can’t pass with just a couple years of experience. I have thought about this problem many times, and I often wonder why we can’t have a practical exam like the CCIE. Sure, it will cost a lot, but to have a cert that’s actually worth something it would be worth it. The mere presence of this new cert hopefully means that MS recognizes the problem and is trying to fix it. I’m really hoping that this will mean similar reform on the DB side as well.So Microsoft… if you’re listening… give us a DBA cert we can be proud of… one that will separate the elite from the managers.Comments? Databases