John,

>As to tips, well, all I can tell you without violating NDA is that the bozos who wroe the exam, apparently, have no problem with compound, data-bearing primary keys.

I noticed that in the official MS Readiness book for 029 -- very disturbing and disconcerting. In their official example questions often there was *not* a choice for a surrogate key, so I am interpreting them more like "which of these substandard keys is more appropriate than the others"

I guess if you think in terms of auditing someone else's design, it makes that check-mark more palatable. It also means "read each question and the possible answers very carefully".