Whilst doing the rounds in the VMworld Solutions Exchange, I got into a conversation about VMware certifications on VMware’s stand. I was there for quite a while and learned a lot about how VMware choose questions and tasks for their exams. It’s quite an involved process and one designed to ensure that a certain percentage of people sitting the exams are capable of answering each question.

Each question must be carefully considered and researched by a small panel of people before it is submitted in to a pool from which the exams are built. In the case of the VCAP-DCA exam, extra effort is required to automate the creation of a suitable testing environment / conditions for the task and, where possible, a mechanism for automatically marking those tasks is required.

So, all things considered, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that exam development and release can take some time. Indeed, when I pressed for a VCAP5-DCA exam release date I wasn’t given a direct answer. It will take as long as it takes to get it right. There was, however, a strong feeling that it should be possible to sit the exam (or at least book it) before the year is out.