After a long time since I attempted Salesforce Certified Technical Architect - Self-Evaluation (SP13) in January 2017 I finally got a chance to appear in the Salesforce Certified Technical Architect - Multiple Choice (WI17) exam. I would say this is the hardest exam so far I have given after Salesforce Certified Force.com Advanced Developer [DEV 501] - Multiple Choice exam because you need to read lots of content (60 long scenario-based-questions) within 120 minutes. So, you can't spend too long time on one question.
In 2016 at Dreamforce, Salesforce introduced the Salesforce Architect Journey, a new framework that provides a step-by-step approach for the CTA journey. All candidates who have already started the CTA path prior to the 2016 Dreamforce announcement, they can continue the existing program. However, they would have deadlines to complete all 3 steps to be awarded the Salesforce Certified Technical Architect credential!
Deadlines for the existing CTA program:
- Step 2: Multiple-choice Exam = January 31, 2017 (After passing this, you will have two years from your exam pass date to complete your review board presentation)
- Step 3: Review Board Presentation = January 31, 2019
If you will not pass by the specified deadline, then you will need to follow the new Architect Journey to complete your Certified Technical Architect credential. Please read further here.
The Multiple Choice exam has divided into high level categories:
- General Architecture Concepts [10%]
- Platform Architecture Concepts [25%]
- Security [17%]
- Application Design Patterns [20%]
- Integration Patterns and Best Practices [15%]
- Development Lifecycle and Deployment Planning [12%]
- Communication [1%]
This is my experience and would recommend to read before appear in the exam.
- What is PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)? What is Force.com? What are the benefits of Force.com as a PaaS? (e.g. Data-Centric Apps, Collaborative Apps, Multi-tenant Architecture, SOA)
- What is MVC (Model-View-Controller)? How does it fit in Force.com platform and Salesforce?
- Custom Objects (Lookup/Master-Detail/Many-to-Many relationship)
- Custom Settings (e.g. configuration for Administrators etc.)
- Solution with configuration (e.g. Workflow Rules etc.) and customization (e.g. Apex etc.)
- External Objects (Lightning Connect)
- Best Practices of standard configuration, customization, SOQL/SOSL, Apex, Visualforce, API
- Visualforce with JavaScript Remoting, @transient, Pagination, Late Binding
- Email-to-Case / Custom Email Services
- Force.com Sites / Communities
- Chatter (e.g. Standard / Chatter API)
- PII (Personally Identified Information) / Encrypted Fields / Platform Encryption
- Single Org / Multi-Org Architecture
- Large Data Volume
- Skinny Tables, Data-Skew, Deferred Sharing, External Id fields, Indexed fields, Optimised SOQL, Apex, Visualforce, Reports, Data Loading, Data Archive.
- Security / Integration
- Page Layouts, Record Types, Field-Level-Security, Object-Level-Security, OWD, Role Hierarchy, Sharing Rules, Manual Sharing, Group Membership, etc.
- Integration Architecture (Point-to-Point, Hub and Spoke, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB))
- Inbound Integration / Outbound Integration
- Integration (Mashups, Inline iframe/Visualforce, Custom Button/AJAX toolkit/JavaScript)
- Synchronous / Asynchronous / Batch processes / Ad-Hoc processes / Real-Time / Scheduled / Nightly
- Transaction Management / Orchestration / Idempotent
- Network Architecture (e.g. DNS, DMZ, Firewall, Forward-Proxy, Reverse-Proxy, ESB, ETL etc.)
- TLS / SSL / HTTP / HTTPS / Browser Security
- One way SSL / Two way SSL / Trusted IP ranges / Client Certificates with Outbound Messages and Apex Callout
- Salesforce.com User Licenses (e.g. Standard User, Community, Partner, Force.com, External Identity etc.)
- Single-Sign On (e.g. SAML, Federated SSO, Delegated Authentication (Custom Token/LDAP), Identity Connect, OAuth Authentication flows (Web Server, User-Agent, Username-Password), Connected Apps, App Launcher etc.)
- Service Provider / Identity Provider
- Social-Sign On (e.g. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, App Launcher etc.)
- Single-Sign On and Social-Sign On with Community Users
- Integration approaches for various scenarios and benefits of each (e.g. Middleware/ETL tools, Salesforce-to-Salesforce, Outbound Messages, SOAP (Enterprise/Partner WSDLs), REST, Bulk, Streaming, Chatter, Metadata API, Heroku etc.)
- Salesforce1 app, Salesforce Mobile SDK (e.g. custom apps, integration with Salesforce data etc.)
- AppExchange apps (e.g. Managed / Un-managed packages)
- Deployment (e.g. Sandbox Management, Deployment Strategy, Code Repository, Version Control System, Force.com IDE, ANT-Migration tool etc.)
- Object Oriented Programming (OOP) in Apex (e.g. Inheritance, Polymorphism, Encapsulation etc.)
- Unified Modelling Language (UML) (e.g. Class, Activity, Sequence diagrams etc.)
- Project Management (e.g. Business Owners, Steering Committee, Scrum/Implementation team, Release Management, Change Management etc.)
- Salesforce Data Privacy Policy
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