As anyone who has ever written a book might tell you, it’s not an insignificant endeavor. Many evenings and weekends were spent outlining, writing, editing, tweaking and updating chapter after chapter. It was a rewarding experience and as anyone who has ever written a book might tell you after finishing it: I need a break but I’ll be back with new ideas to get started on another one.
The SnowPro™ Core Certification Companion Hands-on Preparation and Practice is a publication for Apress in their Certification Study Companion Series. The idea of this series of books is to help candidates prepare for various certification exams as covered in the series by breaking it down into sizeable chunks that can be studied in evenings after work. In addition to explaining the material in each chapter, exercises are provided so that the reader can practice what they have learned in a hands-on manner.
One of the challenges of writing this book, about a new technology such as Snowflake that is constantly evolving, is trying to keep up with the newest releases. Even while I was still writing the chapters, when I went back to review a previous chapter, some functionality might have changed in the meantime, or new features were added. I was writing on a deadline and wasn’t allowed an unlimited number of changes. At some point, I had to draw the line, finish each chapter and accept that by the time the book is published, the material may not be 100% up to date any longer. My editor reassured me that readers would understand that with new technologies, constant change is expected. I made sure to tell the reader to check the latest Snowflake documentation for the most up to date information before taking the exam.
Another challenge in writing a certification preparation book is finding a balance between being precise in providing information that would be covered on the exam against explaining the material in my own words. In many areas I found that the Snowflake documentation is leaning towards being quite technical, expecting the reader to know many underlying concepts that are probably not general knowledge. In such cases I provided explanations that would help the reader to understand the topic at hand. But in some cases, where I thought a precise definition might be required, I tried to write in terms that are as close to the official Snowflake documentation as needed for the exam.
Overall, I’m satisfied that I took on this project. It was an excellent review of all the detailed Snowflake features that I might not have known about since I don’t use all of them on a regular basis in my day job. I often get questions from colleagues and acquaintances about how to learn the material to get SnowPro Core certified, so now I can tell them to go and buy my book!