Last week, I appeared for ABAP HANA 2015 version specialist examination and cleared successfully with excellent score. I am writing this to to share my experience and may be helpful to my peers who look forward to appear the same certification. This is very basic information which may help to prepare for same. Of course, this is my personal approach/experience and this may not work/applicable for your preparation.

Certification is divided in 6 topics and you should already know this if you have already done some homework. Topics are as below:

1. SAP HANA Information Models & Database Procedures
2. Implications of SAP HANA on ABAP Programming
3. Guided Performance Analysis
4. Integration of SAP HANA Coding into ABAP Programs
5. SAP HANA Basics and Technical Concepts
6. SAP Development Tools for SAP NetWeaver

More information is available here: https://training.sap.com/shop/certification/e_hanaaw151-sap-certified-development-specialist—abap-for-sap-hana-edition-2015-g/

When you finish your certification and click SUBMIT, you will get a score card with your scored percentage in each 6 areas.

Point to be noted that this is an SME level ‘Specialist’ certification and there is pre-requisite that you should be already ABAP certified. Definition of Associate/Specialist and professional certifications can be found here: https://training.sap.com/shop/training-options/certification

Every question asked in certification is essentially from these topic areas. On above link you will also find the SAP course material IDs (HA100, HA400, HA300 & BC404) with focus areas. This is very important that you do an intensive analysis between the topic areas and the ‘Content’ of each course and shortlist which areas you need to focus on. You should be easily able to conclude that HA400 is most important area of preparation.

Here is my preparation analysis which I worked on: (Actual examination content was not exactly same as below however I later realized that this bifurcation gave me a healthy direction on what to focus on)

Some important steps which I followed for my preparation are as below:

1. Set my examination date well in advance
2. Create a time table for each topic study
3. Create a time table for each topic practice
4. Write code by myself on ADT for practice
5. A lot of dedicated study & revision
6. Read some basic blogs on how to critically analyze & answer different types of multiple choice questions
7. As a part of preparation, I practiced a lot on SQL scripting (AMDP & HANA DB procedure) however they less covered in real examination
8. As a matter of fact, there is no examination dump or external help material present on open web. I suggest to believe in yourself and follow SAP provided material

Some examination time experiences:

1. There were many ‘multiple answer’ questions. They were a lot more than my associate level ABAP certification. It was a big relief that it was mentioned that how many number of options were right among all options.
2. I realized that questions were particularly framed to check the fundamentals as well as depth of knowledge.
3. My previous work experience on ABAP HANA and practice during preparation both helped equally in answering questions
4. There were very practical questions on ‘Guided performance analysis’ which many times reminded me the reason behind invention of HANA… “Performance”. I enjoyed those questions most as they were meant to be critically analyzed and I thank SAP team to draft such quality questions. I scored lowest though in this section 🙁
5. CDS, AMDP, ADBC, Association/Union/Join & Provisioning were well covered
6. Time was not an issue as I completed well in advance
7. After 35 min when I started, my screen froze and no button was working however proctor was very helpful and he helped me login again in examination. All already answered questions were retrieved on re-login.
8. Revision helped me to correct at least 2-3 answers. Option to ‘Flag’ questions feature was handy for revision purpose
9. 9. All questions should be treated for HANA ABAP 7.40 SPS09 version
10. This is an SME level examination. Questions were framed to keep this in mind.

I wish you best of very luck. I shall be happy to help you further.