Pretty much any year could qualify as "the year of acquiring new knowledge" for me since I'm a voracious learner interested in far too many things, but 2022 was particularly certification-heavy compared to some.
Microsoft's new policy on renewing and re-certifying credentials, which came into effect in 2021, applied to me for the first time as the anniversary of the original exams approached. The re-certification test can be done up to 6 months before expiry of the certification and adds another year to its validity from the original expiry.
(I have Opinions on this process, which will be a topic for another day!)
Certifications achieved in 2022
New (to me)
Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate - mainly focusing on preparing and modelling data, managing and deploying resources to Power BI, and "productionising" the process using deployment workflows and enterprise features.
Microsoft Certified: Azure Cosmos DB Developer Specialty - data modelling and distribution predominantly using the core SQL API (the other APIs such as Cassandra and Gremlin were mentioned but aren't key points in the syllabus at the time of writing -- I suspect this will change over time to encompass these). The SDKs (.NET and others) feature prominently in the syllabus for this one, as well as the now typical use of Azure CLI for tasks like provisioning throughput and specifying global data distribution. Exam: Designing and Implementing Cloud-Native Applications Using Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB.
Redis Certified Developer - about the core concepts of Redis data structures, programming patterns and design approaches for interacting with a Redis backend via the SDKs (I chose to work with Python, but the exam is language-agnostic in regard to the SDKs) with a lot of emphasis on efficiency and computational complexity - the first time I've seen Big O notation in the data world for a while.
Renewed/re-certified
The two areas where it all started for me...
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate
Coursera Specializations
Listed separately since they aren't really "certifications" in the same sense as the others.
- Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate
- Applied Data Science with Python (University of Michigan via Coursera)
- Data Science with Databricks for Data Analysts (Databricks via Coursera)
- Decentralized Finance (DeFi): The Future of Finance (Duke University via Coursera)
- Getting started with Google Workspace (a non-sequitur in this list? -- not gonna lie, my main motivation in studying this was a free t-shirt offer on completion of the course... everyone loves swag!)
What next?
I have an outline list for 2023. I've looked as far ahead as the first half of the year, although I suspect it will take a little longer to work through all of these.