Microsoft 70-459 (Transition Your MCITP: Database Administrator 2008 or MCITP: Database Developer 2008 to MCSE: Data Platform) exam dumps vce, practice test questions, study guide & video training course to study and pass quickly and easily. Microsoft 70-459 Transition Your MCITP: Database Administrator 2008 or MCITP: Database Developer 2008 to MCSE: Data Platform exam dumps & practice test questions and answers. You need avanset vce exam simulator in order to study the Microsoft 70-459 certification exam dumps & Microsoft 70-459 practice test questions in vce format.

A Professional's Guide to the SharePoint 2013 Transition 70-459 Exam

The Microsoft exam 70-459, titled "Transition Your MCSE: SharePoint 2010 to MCSE: SharePoint 2013," was a specialized certification path for experienced SharePoint professionals. This was not an entry-level exam; it was specifically designed as an upgrade path. Its purpose was to validate that an individual who already held a premier certification on SharePoint 2010 had successfully acquired the new skills and knowledge required to design, deploy, and manage the significantly evolved SharePoint 2013 platform. It was a bridge between two major versions of the product.

Passing the 70-459 Exam demonstrated a mastery of the key architectural changes, new features, and updated administrative practices introduced in SharePoint 2013. The exam assumed a high level of existing knowledge and focused intensely on the delta, or the differences, between the two platforms. This series will provide a detailed exploration of those differences, covering the critical topics you would have needed to master to successfully pass this challenging transition exam and achieve the MCSE: SharePoint 2013 credential.

Who Was the Target Audience for this Exam?

The target audience for the 70-459 Exam was very specific. It was intended for IT professionals who were already certified at the MCITP or MCSE level on SharePoint 2010. This included roles such as senior administrators, enterprise architects, and consultants who were responsible for leading migration projects and managing complex SharePoint farms. The exam was designed to be an efficient way for these established experts to update their credentials without having to retake the full series of exams required for a newcomer to the 2013 platform.

The candidate was expected to have deep, real-world experience in managing a SharePoint 2010 environment. This included proficiency in areas like service application architecture, farm deployment, security, and PowerShell administration. The 70-459 Exam built upon this foundation, testing the candidate's ability to understand, plan for, and implement the new technologies and architectural paradigms that were introduced with the 2013 release, which represented a significant evolution of the SharePoint platform.

The Major Architectural Shifts from 2010 to 2013

To understand the scope of the 70-459 Exam, it is crucial to appreciate the profound architectural shifts that occurred between SharePoint 2010 and 2013. The 2013 version was rebuilt with a focus on cloud-readiness, scalability, and improved performance. One of the most significant changes was the complete overhaul of the search architecture, which integrated the powerful FAST search engine directly into the core product. This created a single, unified search platform that powered many new user experiences.

Another major shift was the introduction of the new Cloud App Model, which provided a more secure and flexible way to extend SharePoint's functionality, moving away from the classic farm solutions. Furthermore, several key services were decoupled from the core SharePoint farm. Workflow processing was offloaded to a new, separate product called Workflow Manager, and the rendering of Office documents in the browser was handled by the new Office Web Apps Server. The 70-459 Exam required a deep understanding of these foundational changes.

The New Cloud App Model

Perhaps the most significant change for developers and architects, and a central topic on the 70-459 Exam, was the introduction of the Cloud App Model (CAM). This was a direct response to the stability and security issues often caused by the classic full-trust farm solutions used in previous versions. The App Model provided a new, isolated way to extend SharePoint. Instead of running custom code directly on the SharePoint servers, apps would run in a separate domain or on a separate server.

The 70-459 Exam would have tested your knowledge of the two primary types of apps. SharePoint-hosted apps consisted of purely client-side code, such as JavaScript and HTML, that ran within the browser. Provider-hosted apps, on the other hand, allowed for server-side code to be run on a separate, external web server, communicating with SharePoint through secure APIs using the OAuth protocol. This architectural shift was a cornerstone of the 2013 release.

Decoupled Services: Workflow Manager and Office Web Apps Server

In SharePoint 2013, Microsoft began a trend of decoupling major services from the core farm, a key architectural concept for the 70-459 Exam. The first major example of this was the new workflow engine. The classic SharePoint 2010 workflow engine was still available for backward compatibility, but the new, more powerful SharePoint 2013 workflow platform ran on a completely separate server product called Workflow Manager. This provided much greater scalability and reliability for workflow processing.

Similarly, the ability to view and edit Office documents in a web browser was offloaded to a new, standalone product called Office Web Apps Server (now known as Office Online Server). In SharePoint 2010, this functionality was built directly into the farm. By decoupling it, a single Office Web Apps Server farm could now provide rendering services to multiple SharePoint farms, as well as to Exchange Server and Lync Server. Understanding how to integrate these external services was a critical administrative skill.

A Note on the Historical Context

When studying for a legacy exam like the 70-459 Exam, it is helpful to understand the historical context. SharePoint 2013 was released at a time when Microsoft was making a major strategic pivot towards the cloud with services like Office 365. Many of the architectural changes in the 2013 version, such as the App Model and the decoupling of services, were designed to make the on-premises product more cloud-like and to make it easier for customers to eventually move to or operate in a hybrid model with SharePoint Online.

The emphasis on client-side technologies and standard protocols like OAuth and REST was a clear indicator of this new direction. The 70-459 Exam, therefore, was not just testing knowledge of a new product version; it was testing a professional's ability to adapt to a new way of thinking about SharePoint development and administration. The concepts introduced in this era became the foundation for all subsequent versions of SharePoint, including the modern SharePoint Online platform.

The Structure of the Transition Exam

A transition exam like the 70-459 Exam has a unique structure. It does not attempt to cover every single feature of the new product from scratch. Instead, it assumes that the candidate is already an expert on the previous version. The questions are specifically crafted to target the new features and the areas where there have been significant changes. To prepare for such an exam, you cannot simply study SharePoint 2013 in isolation; you must study it in comparison to SharePoint 2010.

Your study process would have involved identifying a feature in SharePoint 2010, such as Business Connectivity Services, and then learning exactly what was new or different about that feature in SharePoint 2013. You would need to do this for every major workload, including search, social, web content management, and business intelligence. The 70-459 Exam was a comprehensive test of this "delta" knowledge across the entire platform.

Understanding the Upgrade Methodology

A core competency for any professional taking the 70-459 Exam was a deep understanding of the upgrade process from SharePoint 2010 to 2013. SharePoint 2013 introduced a significant change in the supported upgrade methodology. In previous versions, administrators had the option of performing an in-place upgrade, which installed the new version directly over the old one on the same hardware. However, SharePoint 2013 deprecated this method in favor of the database attach upgrade method only.

The database attach method is a much cleaner and safer process. It involves creating a brand new SharePoint 2013 farm on new hardware and then attaching copies of the content and service application databases from the old SharePoint 2010 farm. This approach ensures that your original 2010 farm remains untouched and can serve as a rollback point if any issues are encountered during the upgrade process. The 70-459 Exam required a thorough knowledge of this database attach process.

Planning the Upgrade Process

Thorough planning is the most critical phase of a successful SharePoint migration, and it is a key knowledge area for the 70-459 Exam. Before you even begin the technical steps, you must perform a detailed analysis of your existing SharePoint 2010 environment. This includes creating an inventory of all your web applications, site collections, and customizations. You need to identify any third-party solutions or custom code that may not be compatible with SharePoint 2013.

Your plan must also include detailed hardware and software specifications for the new SharePoint 2013 farm. SharePoint 2013 had increased requirements, including the need for 64-bit servers and a 64-bit version of SQL Server. You would also need to plan for the creation of new service accounts with the correct permissions. A well-documented plan is the blueprint for a smooth and successful migration, which is a core skill tested on the 70-459 Exam.

Executing Pre-Upgrade Checks and Farm Cleanup

Before you can attach your SharePoint 2010 databases to a new farm, you must ensure they are in a healthy state. The 70-459 Exam would have tested your knowledge of the pre-upgrade checking and cleanup procedures. SharePoint 2010 provides a PowerShell cmdlet, Test-SPContentDatabase, that you can run against your content databases to identify potential issues that could cause problems during the upgrade. This check can find issues like orphaned sites or wide lists that need to be addressed before migration.

In addition to the technical checks, it is a best practice to perform a content cleanup. This involves working with business users to identify and delete old or unnecessary sites, libraries, and documents. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be migrated, which can significantly speed up the upgrade process and reduce the risk of errors. A clean and healthy source environment is the best starting point for any migration project.

The Database Attach Upgrade in Action

The core technical process of the upgrade, and a key practical skill for the 70-459 Exam, is the database attach itself. The process begins by taking your SharePoint 2010 farm offline to ensure no new data is being written. You then create read-only copies of your content databases from the SQL Server. These database copies are then moved to the new SQL Server that supports your SharePoint 2013 farm.

In the new farm, you use the Mount-SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet to attach these databases to your web applications. When you run this command, SharePoint begins the upgrade process on the database. It will upgrade the database schema to the new 2013 version and perform an initial integrity check. You must be familiar with the parameters of this cmdlet and how to monitor the progress of the upgrade.

Deferred Site Collection Upgrade

One of the most significant new features in the SharePoint 2013 upgrade process, and a critical topic for the 70-459 Exam, was the concept of the deferred site collection upgrade. When you perform a database attach upgrade, the database schema is upgraded immediately, but the individual site collections within that database are not. They continue to run in a special "2010 compatibility mode" on the new 2013 farm. This allows you to get the farm up and running quickly.

This new model delegates the responsibility of upgrading the look and feel of a site collection to the site collection administrator. They can choose when to perform the final upgrade of their site. Before they do, they can use a feature called the evaluation site upgrade to create a temporary copy of their site and preview how it will look and function in the new 2013 mode. This feature provided much greater flexibility and control over the final step of the migration.

Upgrading Service Applications

In addition to the content databases, you must also upgrade your service application databases. The 70-459 Exam required you to know the process for the key service applications. For most of the major service applications, such as the Managed Metadata Service, the Secure Store Service, and the Business Connectivity Services, the process is similar to the content database upgrade. You create a new instance of the service application in the 2013 farm and then attach the upgraded copy of the 2010 service database.

However, some service applications, like the Search Service Application, could not be directly upgraded in this way. For search, the process involved creating a brand new search service application in the 2013 farm and then performing a full crawl of the content sources after the content databases were upgraded. Understanding which service applications could be upgraded and which needed to be recreated was a key piece of knowledge.

Migrating Customizations

One of the most challenging aspects of any SharePoint upgrade is handling customizations. The 70-459 Exam would have tested your understanding of the strategies for migrating custom solutions. As mentioned, SharePoint 2013 introduced the new Cloud App Model as the preferred way to extend the platform. Therefore, a key part of the upgrade planning process was to analyze your existing full-trust farm solutions and determine a strategy for re-engineering them using the new App Model.

This was not a simple process and often required significant development effort. For customizations that could not be easily rebuilt as an app, you would need to test them thoroughly to ensure they were still compatible with the 2013 platform. The 70-459 Exam expected a candidate to be able to assess the impact of customizations on an upgrade and to recommend the appropriate migration path based on best practices.

The New Unified Search Architecture

The most significant and transformative change in SharePoint 2013, and a massive topic on the 70-459 Exam, was the complete overhaul of the search architecture. In SharePoint 2010, there were two separate search offerings: the standard, built-in SharePoint Search and a high-end, separate product called FAST Search for SharePoint. In SharePoint 2013, the best features of both of these products were merged into a single, unified search platform that was included out of the box.

This new architecture was far more powerful, scalable, and flexible than anything that had come before. It not only provided a better traditional search experience but also became the engine that powered a wide range of new content discovery and publishing scenarios. A deep and detailed understanding of this new search architecture, its components, and its capabilities was absolutely essential for anyone attempting the 70-459 Exam.

A New Set of Search Components

The new search architecture introduced a completely new set of components, and the 70-459 Exam required you to know the purpose of each one. The architecture was divided into several key processing components that could be scaled out across multiple servers. The Crawl Component is responsible for connecting to content sources and fetching the data. The Content Processing Component then takes this raw data and transforms it into a clean, normalized format, extracting metadata and text.

The Analytics Processing Component is responsible for performing deep analysis on the content and user behavior to derive information about usage patterns and relationships. The Index Component takes the processed content and builds the search index, which is what allows for fast query responses. Finally, the Query Processing Component is responsible for receiving queries from users, executing them against the index, and applying any necessary security trimming.

Continuous Crawl for Fresher Results

A major innovation in the new search platform, and a key feature to understand for the 70-459 Exam, was the introduction of Continuous Crawl. In SharePoint 2010, you had two main types of crawls: full crawls, which indexed everything, and incremental crawls, which only indexed what had changed since the last crawl. While incremental crawls were faster, they still had to be run on a schedule, which meant that new or updated content could take hours to appear in the search results.

Continuous Crawl, which was available for SharePoint content sources, solved this problem. Instead of running on a fixed schedule, a continuous crawl runs constantly, checking for new and updated content every few minutes. This meant that the search index was always kept much more up-to-date, and users could find new documents and pages almost as soon as they were created. This feature dramatically improved the freshness of the search results.

Query Rules and Result Sources

The way that you could customize and tune the search experience was also completely transformed in SharePoint 2013, a critical topic for the 70-459 Exam. The old concepts of keywords and best bets from SharePoint 2010 were replaced by a much more powerful and flexible feature called Query Rules. A Query Rule allows you to define a condition, such as the query containing a specific term, and then trigger one or more actions.

These actions could include promoting certain results to the top of the page, displaying a special block of results called a result block, or even rewriting the query before it is executed. You could also create Result Sources, which are essentially predefined queries that restrict the scope of a search to a specific subset of the content, such as only documents from a particular site or only items with a certain content type.

Customizing Results with Display Templates

In SharePoint 2010, customizing the look and feel of the search results was a complex process that required modifying XSLT stylesheets. SharePoint 2013 introduced a much simpler and more powerful method called Display Templates, and your understanding of this technology was a requirement for the 70-459 Exam. Display Templates are based on standard web technologies: HTML and JavaScript.

Each type of search result, such as a document or a web page, has an associated display template that defines the HTML structure for how that result should be rendered. You can easily create new display templates or modify existing ones using any standard HTML editor. This made it much easier for web designers and front-end developers to create highly customized and visually appealing search-driven interfaces without needing to be deep SharePoint experts.

The Search-Driven Experience: Cross-Site Publishing

The power of the new search platform extended far beyond the traditional search center. It enabled a whole new set of web content management scenarios, a key concept for the 70-459 Exam. One of the most important of these was Cross-Site Publishing. This feature allowed you to maintain your content in one or more authoring site collections and then use search to publish that content dynamically to one or more public-facing publishing sites.

For example, you could have a product catalog maintained in a list in an internal site. You would then crawl this content. On your public website, you could use search-driven web parts to issue a query that retrieves the product information from the search index and displays it to the user. This decoupled the content authoring from the content presentation, providing a much more flexible and scalable way to manage large websites.

The Content Search Web Part

The workhorse for building these new search-driven experiences, and a central component to understand for the 70-459 Exam, was the new Content Search Web Part (CSWP). The CSWP was a highly configurable web part that allowed you to issue a query against the search index and then display the results using a specific set of display templates. It was the successor to the older Content Query Web Part, but it was far more powerful and scalable because it was powered by the search index instead of querying the database directly.

You could configure the CSWP with a sophisticated query using the built-in query builder, which allowed you to filter and sort the results based on any managed property in the search schema. The combination of the CSWP's powerful query capabilities and the flexibility of display templates allowed you to create a wide variety of dynamic and visually rich interfaces, from news rollups to product catalogs.

A New Paradigm for Branding: Design Manager

SharePoint 2013 completely revolutionized the process of branding and customizing the look and feel of publishing sites, and this was a major topic on the 70-459 Exam. The old, complex process that required SharePoint Designer and a deep understanding of SharePoint's proprietary markup was replaced by a new feature called the Design Manager. The Design Manager was built with standard web designers in mind, allowing them to use their existing tools and skills.

The core concept of the Design Manager was that a designer could create a complete visual design for a site using standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in any editor they preferred, such as Dreamweaver or Sublime Text. They could then upload this HTML file to SharePoint. The Design Manager would automatically convert this HTML file into a fully functional SharePoint Master Page, preserving the original HTML and allowing for a direct, bi-directional sync between the two files.

Master Pages and Page Layouts Reimagined

While the concepts of Master Pages and Page Layouts still existed in SharePoint 2013, the way they were created and managed was completely transformed by the Design Manager. As mentioned, you no longer had to directly edit the complex .master file. Instead, you worked with a clean HTML version. To add SharePoint functionality, like a navigation menu or a search box, you would use the Snippet Gallery.

The Snippet Gallery allowed you to select a SharePoint component, configure its properties, and then it would generate a small piece of HTML markup, or a snippet, that you could simply copy and paste into your HTML file. This made it much easier to incorporate dynamic SharePoint controls into a static HTML design. The 70-459 Exam would have expected you to understand this new workflow for branding and how it differed from the older, more developer-centric approach in SharePoint 2010.

Managed Navigation and the Term Store

Navigation is a critical component of any website, and SharePoint 2013 introduced a powerful new option for managing it called Managed Navigation. Your understanding of this feature was a requirement for the 70-459 Exam. In SharePoint 2010, navigation was primarily based on the structure of your sites and pages. With Managed Navigation, you could instead base your site's navigation on a term set that was defined in the Managed Metadata Service's Term Store.

This provided a much more flexible and centralized way to manage your site's navigation hierarchy. You could easily reorder or rename navigation nodes by simply changing the term set, without having to restructure your actual sites. This also enabled the creation of friendly URLs that were based on the terms in your navigation structure, which was a significant improvement for both users and search engine optimization.

The Evolution of My Sites and Social Features

SharePoint 2013 brought significant enhancements to the platform's social collaboration capabilities, a key area of change covered on the 70-459 Exam. The My Site, which was the personal profile and content area for each user, was redesigned to be much more engaging and interactive. The central feature of the new My Site was the Newsfeed, which provided a microblogging experience similar to other social media platforms. Users could post short updates, follow colleagues, documents, and sites, and see a consolidated stream of activity.

This new social fabric was woven throughout the platform. For example, you could "follow" a document directly from a document library, and updates about that document would then appear in your personal newsfeed. These features were designed to improve communication and content discovery within the organization. The 70-459 Exam would have required you to understand how to configure and manage these new social features.

Introducing Community Sites

To provide a more structured forum for collaboration and knowledge sharing, SharePoint 2013 introduced a new site template called the Community Site. A deep understanding of the features of this new template was a requirement for the 70-459 Exam. A Community Site was designed to function like an internal discussion forum. It featured a categorized discussion list where members could post questions and replies.

To encourage participation, Community Sites included a reputation and gamification system. Members could earn points and achievement badges for contributing to the community, such as by starting new discussions or having their replies marked as the "best answer." The site also included features for moderation, allowing community managers to review and manage the content. This new template provided a much richer forum experience than the basic discussion boards available in SharePoint 2010.

Managing User Profiles and Audiences

The User Profile Service Application, which is responsible for synchronizing user information from Active Directory and other sources, was also enhanced in SharePoint 2013. The 70-459 Exam would have tested your knowledge of these improvements. The synchronization process was made more reliable, and the user interface for managing user profiles was updated.

Audiences, which are rules that allow you to target content to specific groups of users based on their profile properties, continued to be a key feature. For example, you could create an audience for all the users in the "Marketing" department and then use that audience to target a specific news article so that only they would see it. Understanding how to create and compile audiences was a key administrative skill for personalizing the user experience.

The Role of the Distributed Cache Service

To support the high-performance needs of the new social features, particularly the newsfeed, SharePoint 2013 introduced a new service called the Distributed Cache Service. Your understanding of this critical infrastructure component was a requirement for the 70-459 Exam. The Distributed Cache Service created a cluster of in-memory cache servers across the SharePoint farm. This allowed for very fast storage and retrieval of frequently accessed data, such as the activity feeds for users.

This service ran on the Front End servers in the farm and was a crucial component for the performance of the social workloads. As an administrator, you needed to know how to manage this service using PowerShell, including how to properly allocate memory to it and how to gracefully start and stop the service on a server when performing maintenance. A misconfigured Distributed Cache Service could have a significant negative impact on farm performance.

Business Intelligence Enhancements

SharePoint 2013 continued to serve as a central platform for Microsoft's Business Intelligence (BI) stack, and the 70-459 Exam required you to understand the enhancements made in this version. Excel Services was a key component, allowing users to publish Excel workbooks containing complex data models and visualizations to a SharePoint library. Other users could then interact with these reports in their web browser without needing to have Excel installed.

The 2013 version brought deeper integration with the broader SQL Server BI stack. This included enhanced support for SQL Server Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode and better integration with PerformancePoint Services for creating interactive dashboards and scorecards. The most significant new BI feature was the introduction of Power View, which allowed users to create highly interactive and visually rich ad-hoc reports directly from a SharePoint site.

The Introduction of Power View

Power View was a major new addition to the Microsoft BI toolset and a key feature to understand for the 70-459 Exam. It was a browser-based, interactive data exploration and visualization tool that was designed for business users, not just BI professionals. From a SharePoint document library, a user could launch Power View on top of a data model, such as one published in an Excel workbook or a SQL Server Analysis Services tabular model.

The user was then presented with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that allowed them to create a variety of interactive charts, graphs, and tables. They could easily filter and cross-filter the data by simply clicking on the elements in the visualizations. This provided a powerful self-service BI capability directly within the SharePoint environment, enabling users to explore data and find insights on their own.

eDiscovery Enhancements and the Discovery Center

The capabilities for managing legal discovery and compliance were significantly enhanced in SharePoint 2013, a critical topic for the 70-459 Exam. A new site template called the eDiscovery Center was introduced. This site served as a central portal for legal and compliance teams to manage their discovery cases. From within a case, they could identify relevant content sources, such as SharePoint sites and Exchange mailboxes, and place them on an in-place hold.

The in-place hold was a major new feature. It preserved all the content in the source location in an immutable state, but it allowed users to continue working with that content. This was a significant improvement over the older methods, which required moving the content to a separate archive. The eDiscovery Center also provided tools for searching across all the on-hold content and exporting the results for legal review.

Final Preparation Strategy

Your final preparation for the 70-459 Exam should have been focused on consolidating your knowledge of the key differences between SharePoint 2010 and 2013. As a transition exam, every question would have been designed to test your understanding of a new feature or an architectural change. A highly effective study method would have been to create a detailed comparison chart, listing each major workload and then detailing what was new or different in the 2013 version.

Hands-on experience was absolutely essential. The ideal preparation would have involved building a SharePoint 2010 farm and a SharePoint 2013 farm side-by-side. You could then practice the migration process and experiment with configuring the new features, such as the Design Manager and Query Rules. This practical application of the knowledge is what would have truly prepared you for the scenario-based questions on the 70-459 Exam.

Navigating Exam Day

On the day of the 70-459 Exam, the key was to be calm and methodical. As an experienced SharePoint professional, you would have already had a vast amount of knowledge. The challenge was to focus that knowledge on the specific changes and new features of the 2013 platform. You would need to read each question very carefully to understand exactly what it was asking, as many questions would have been designed to trap someone who was still thinking in the "2010 way."

Time management would have been crucial. It was important to pace yourself and not spend too much time on any single question. If you were unsure of an answer, it was best to mark it for review and move on, returning to it at the end if you had time. A confident and strategic approach, built on a foundation of thorough and comparative study, was the key to success.

Conclusion

Passing the 70-459 Exam was a significant achievement that demonstrated a professional's ability to adapt to a major platform evolution. While SharePoint 2013 itself is now a legacy product, the architectural shifts it introduced have had a lasting impact and are more relevant than ever. The move towards a client-side object model and the introduction of the Cloud App Model laid the groundwork for the modern SharePoint Framework (SPFx) used in SharePoint Online today.

Similarly, the powerful, search-driven architecture that was introduced in 2013 is the direct ancestor of the Microsoft Graph and the intelligent search and discovery experiences that are at the heart of the modern Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The knowledge validated by the 70-459 Exam, therefore, was not just about a single product version; it was about understanding the foundational principles of the modern, cloud-centric SharePoint platform.

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