This is a very decent overview of Windows-based programming in .NET. It's dry and boring in the typical certification-book style. The real question is, "Is it a great book for passing the certification exams?" I'll let you know after I take the tests myself.

On that note, one of my major criticisms of this book is the practice exam on the included CD. It does a poor job of covering the specific skills that are measured on the Windows-based certification exams, and, worst of all, only tells you your total score. The practice test doesn't tell you which specific questions you missed, nor does it give you an explanation of the correct answer. Totally useless.

I used this book and the exam cram book. The combination was more than adequate for passing the exam (scored 862). I didn't like having to remember to skip past the VB code (which is always listed first). The exam tops were covered well but the practice exam included with this book is ridiculously hard. The practice exams provided with the exam cram book were much more like the real test.

I used this book and the exam cram book. The combination was more than adequate for passing the exam (scored 862). I didn't like having to remember to skip past the VB code (which is always listed first). The exam tops were covered well but the practice exam included with this book is ridiculously hard. The practice exams provided with the exam cram book were much more like the real test.

This book did a great job of introducing a considerable amount of material clearly, and without assuming much prior knowledge. If you understand basic O-O theory and terminology, this book should have you building Windows applications in no time.

Errors galore! And no, they're not all simple grammatical mistakes. There are dozens of examples of code that if entered into .Net and run would bomb or not do what they are supposed to do (here's just one example, on page 56 the VB code lists myForm.Activate() but the C# code lists myForm.Active()).

Worse yet, I was planning to study just this one book and then take the test. But now that I've read the others' reviews I see that such would be folly: this book alone does not give enough to pass the exam.

However, let me point out that for someone who is just interested in learning how to create Windows-based applications using VB.Net or C#.Net (i.e., passing the exam is not the goal) I think the book easily provides enough to satisfy. That's why I gave it three stars despite the negative things I had to say about it: it really isn't all that bad (but it's really not all that great either).

PS: I bought the book at my local, but national, bookstore (didn't have a computer then) and paid the full [price]. Should have had a friend by it for me from here!

This is a greate book not only to study for the test with, but also a greate intro to Windows programming for those new to .Net. This book alone will not get you through the test, but it will get you going down the road.

My only complaint is that the practice test are pretty limited.

This book is not sufficent for taking 70-306, so many topics are not covered. Dont trust this and go to the exam with only this.

Don't waste your money or your time with this book.
While it does point out the required topics for the tests, the book falls way short on covering those key topics. Most if not all of the content is vague at best and it is seriously lacking in its coverage of ADO.NET and security which are heavily tested topics.

I passed my exam but NOT thanks to this book. Mostly based on experience which is why after taking the test I can tell you this book is not worth the pulp it is printed on.

I would recommend a nice book on ADO.NET such as Dave Sceppa's ADO.NET Core Reference and any of the Wrox books on Windows Forms for the rest. From MS Press there is "Visual C# Core Reference" (I myself just noticed my predilection towards "Core Reference" tomes!) By Mickey Williams.

For the test, there is no substitute for experience, but MSDN onlike is an EXCELLENT resource that everyone should leverage, test or real life.

If you are taking the test, good luck, otherwise happy .NETing!

I passed the 70-316 exam today and used this book for preparation. By and large, I like this book -- it is readable, covers most major topics (I especially like the coverage of testing and debugging and of deployment), and has good labs. It is not enough to pass the exam, though -- some topics (for example, publishing policies, the CASPOL utility, XML validation, and dealing with ASP.NET clients) are not covered even though there were exam questions on these topics. The book never stresses what is really important on the exam (from my experience, three single most important topics are ADO.NET, GUI development, and configuring and securing assemblies.) I would advise to supplement reading of this book with practice exams on Transcender and to read a good ADO.NET book before the exam -- this important topic is not covered well in the book.

I have taken and passed the 70-306 exam. Firstly this book is not enough to pass the exam or even anywhere close. What this book is, is an overview of the topics covered by the exam. I used the book and a MeasureUp demo exam which I found very good.

The book focuses too much (as far as passing exam is concerned) on details of GDI and details of Security. It has a huge omission in relation to using legacy code & platform invoke. It also doesn't go into enough detail about command line .NET tools (secutil, Mscorcfg.msc, Regasm,...).

ADO.NET is a vital part of the exam and the book has a single chapter but its badly written. Its very difficult to understand what actually are not complicated topics.

The practice exam is similar in format to real thing but since this is training book its a serious omission that you cannot review your mistakes and learn what the answer should have been.

...

This book was selected by others to be the basis of a VB.NET study group which I led for about 3 months. Although the VB information was generally accurate, many of the examples were difficult to follow and illustrate to our group. Based on my experience from the VB 6 exams, I felt this book left too much detail out for someone to pass the certification exam without substantial use of additional references. For those areas which I lead our study group, I pulled in additional information from other sources. Although I haven't taken the Microsoft 70-306 exam yet, I did some practice with the Transcender exams after extensively studying this book - there were substantial areas in the practice exams not covered by the book.

As an introductory book on Windows based .NET, it's OK especially considering that both VB and C# are covered if you want an introduction to both languages. I did not attempt to learn the C# part of the course, so I can't speak to the comments made in the reviews by others about errors in the C# code due to cutting and pasting from the VB.

For those wanting to study for and pass the 70-306 exam with the fewest number of books to read, you'd better pass on this one.

A third of the items on the actual test are not covered in this book. You will need MSDN and Transcender to pass this exam. Good examples. Fast paced book, especially due to the fact that you skip a lot of pages that are specific to C#. The other book (Upgrading VB6 to VB.Net) is not necessary to pass the exam. Good Luck.

I passed 70-316 - but only after purchasing extra exam samples from MeasureUp (who are pretty good btw). If I'd gone straight into the exam thinking that the samples provided with the book were of the same difficulty as the real thing - I'd have failed. The book itself covers all the topics needed, but only in shallow detail. There are pointers to extra reading (mainly in MSDN help) which you'll need to follow to add meat to the books bones. Treat the book as an (expensive) overview rather than a comprehensive guide to the subject(s) in questions.

This is a very average book that perhaps covers all objectives of the test, but it does no more. The book falls really short in terms of real world examples. The snippets in the book are all one-liners, out of context and leave more questions than answers. A specific example (and the most annoying one) of a section with such one-liner snippets is the one related to the use of Security classes in the .NET framework. Even the labs are all trivial examples which you'll never use in real life.

The book also doesn't organize the material too well. The topics and terminology that would be covered in later chapters are freely used in earlier chapters.

You can probably pass the test using this book, but if you don't already know VB.NET and ADO.NET, it would take an inordinate amount of effort to understand the stuff using this book. I would certainly recommend reading some other book or articles on the web to supplement the material given in this book (or simply to make more sense of material given in this book).

On the positive side, this book does cover all topics on the test, even if badly. The test on the companion CD, however, is nothing like the actual test.

All in all, this book lays out the raw facts, but doesn't put them all together to make a cohesive, understandable picture of software development using the .NET platform.

This book provides experienced developers with a broad survey of Windows application development with VB.Net and C#. It provides enough information to get you started developing .Net applications. It is on-par with previous MS offerings and provides about 50%-60% of the material necessary to pass the certification exam. You will still have to dig deeper into other sources to pick up the remaining 40% to 50%. The new practice exam uses the same user interface as the real thing and the questions are tougher than previous exam prep materials from MS. I would recommend this book to experienced Visual Studio 6 developers. Not geared toward beginning developers.

Unless you have practical experience using VB.NET, this book is not enough to pass the test. It covers all topics, but too lightly in many areas. The practice test on the CD is only useful to point out that you need to continue to study after you fail it. It simply displays a score. I recommend purchasing one of the practice tests suggested on the Microsoft website in addition to this book. I also purchased the core reference by MS Press which has been very helpful. However, the topic of security is not covered at all and it's a topic you must know.

To get right to the point, what everyone wants to know about a certification book is "Can you pass the test by using this book alone?". The answer is YES. There were only 2 or 3 questions on my test that weren't covered in this book. If you've read certification books before then you know how rare it is for one book to be adequate. But you had better know every nook and cranny of its content because the .NET tests are harder than the old MCSD tests. You must know conceptually how to use what is covered. You can't just memorize. But you must also memorize things like events, properties, and methods for the most obscure objects. This test is also 2 hours 45 minutes long, so be prepared and good luck.

And lots of hands on practice! I actually thought this book was well written and quite concise. Because exam prep books must cover a wide range of topics I feel the author did an excellent job explaining the many subjects needed to prepare for the test.

I actually learned quite a bit from the samples in this book, but I did spend some time really analyzing the code. My suggestion is to type it in yourself. Don't just load it from the CD and run it.

I just passed the exam. THis book is not
enough to prepare the exam. Many Items on
the exam are not covered by the book.
You must take the practice test before go to
the test. I get a good package from Internet for
one test voucher and 6 month test practice.
and this help me pass the exam.

I have nearly a dozen books on .Net now. This is by far the worst .Net book I have bought. I haven't yet taken the exam yet so take my comments with a grain of salt. It is true what others say about this book. The coverage is very rushed. The software sample test totally blows! It hung up on me as the time expired. Can you believe that? Totally typical of Microsoft software! I spent 1.5 hrs going through the test exam and it freezes just as the time runs out. If the real exam freezes up on me when I take it, watch out!

Just pass the exam, strong recommend supplyment material includes, ADO.Net core reference by Microsoft and transcend exam kit is a must have.

If you buy just one book for the exam - this should be it...
Pretty good coverage of exam topics.

There is a bunch of material that can be used to prepare for 70-316. For example, a lot of the information in this book can be found in the MSDN library. But I am sure you would first want to get a feel of what this brand new exam is like. You would want to get a summary of the .NET Windows Applications paradigm, a summary that is dense and gets to the point. This book did just that for me. For my level of preparation, this book turned out to be a good choice.

As I started reading this two-language book, I soon got used to identifying the mistakes committed by those who wrote the C# code by copying and pasting the VB code and then changing the keywords. I'm talking about missed semicolons and such. I got disappointed here and there when a topic that was mentioned in the index of the lesson was not discussed anywhere in its body. Take "multicultural test data" for example, in chapter 5, lesson 3.

Apart from that, the book has managed quite well to lead me through the most important topics of the exam. As I got used to the concepts, I was able to ask the right questions in newsgroups and do refined searches in the vast MSDN library. I found the sample exam included in the book very useful since I was relying on it more and more as the exam date approached.

Considering my two years experience with Windows Applications using VC++ 6.0 I passed 70-316 and I don't think I needed anything else besides or instead of this book.

Having a decent background in VB 6 and Java, I bought this book as an introduction to .NET and C#. Overall, I was not disappointed. I found a few errors, but nothing that kepy me from learning the material. The coverage of some areas was thin, particularly ADO.NET which is a fairly radical departure from ADO. Having taken a number of older MCSD exams, I would guess that the material in this book plus hands-on programming and reading from the Internet will get me past the exam. My biggest disappointment with the book was the labs. Microsoft used to publish great interactive CD training that required many hours of hands-on work to complete the labs. In this book, the labs covered the material but not much more. In summary, if you have programming experience and want a structured approach to learning .NET, try this book.

I strongly warn people not to buy this book. It is full of mistakes and statements that are just wrong. It is highly irresponsible of the publisher to allow such a poor quality book to be put out on the guise that it will prepare someone for a certification exam.

This is a great book for learning windows forms and VisualStudio.Net. The topics are taught in a concise and clear manner. The labs are well designed. It shows the author(s) has rich experiences on using VS.NET. Not like other .net books(using .net SDK) on the markets, this book teaches you how to get the job done in the RIGHT way. After working on a couple of chapters with the lab, my productivity increased! I wrote a widows form application in 40 minutes for a client that would take me at least 2 hours if I used VS6.0 and MFC. I found it is not only a good test preparation book but also a good reference for using VS.NET (MSDN is too huge, it is not easy to find the usage for VS.NET.). Highly recommend for developers who want to use .net technology in their job.

I just took the test and I did manage to pass it. However, there were many items on the exam that were not covered adequately by the book (especially relating to .NET application security and ADO.NET). I would not rely on this as an exclusive source. Also, there were many errors I did manage to find in the book as I went. The most flagrant area for this was the ADO.NET chapter.

If you do use this book, be sure to try everything.

I had no experience of C# 14 days ago, and used the O'Reilly "Programming C#" book and this one to prepare for the exam I took recently.

I have read through all the previous reviews of the book, and here are the points I would pick up on:

Someone said 30% of the exam is ADO-based. Yes, that was exactly my experience. I was very surprised just how many of the questions relate to ADO, so you really should learn this part of the book VERY WELL. I skipped the XML section which was a mistake (there were quite a few XML-based questions in the exam).

Someone else pointed out that the Windows Drawing code section wasn't relevant for the exam. I too was bored by it, and skipped it, having done extensive GUI work under VC++ in the past. Again, this was a topic that didn't come up at all in the exam.

I think that this book is sufficient to pass the exam on its own, but you do need to know it very well. I didn't buy the transcender exams, so when I went into the exam blind. But as a specific example of things the book touches on in passing (usually with a table) which you should really learn well --

-- Properties of different event handlers
-- General properties of Windows controls
-- EVERYTHING about ADO, including Constraints/Relations, and some basic SQL in addition.
-- Role/usage of the various debugging windows
-- Using .NET with legacy components/controls
-- Code and Role-based Security (namespaces, methods, and meaning)
-- Read very carefully the chapters on "Designing a User Interface" toward the start of the book. This material is often referred to

Also, don't skip the "language overview" section which makes up the first few hundred pages of the book. The O'Reilly book covered this much better. You can expect some general questions on exception handling, use of interfaces, etc., which are "intuitive" but not necessarily covered specifically in this book. My own approach was to take each chapter and invent a test application of my own to go through the concepts. MS are particularly cunning in the exam, and simply learning "by rote" won't get you through -- you HAVE TO have written applications yourself in order to be ready for some of the questions.

I have to say, this is the first MS exam I've taken, and I respect it for its thoroughness. There are only a few "obvious" answers, so be prepared. The questions in the exam are often lengthy, with large sections of code, and while 2 1/2 hours for 150 questions may seem a lot, there is often a lot of material to digest.

In retrospect, I would have preferred to prep up a lot more before I took the exam. I passed, but it was a hard slog. Next time, I'll spend longer and not skimp on the preparation.

The key of this review, though -- learn ADO THOROUGHLY. 30% is nearly 50 questions! If you don't feel happy with ADO, you'll probably fail the exam on that alone.

Best of luck to you all,

Alex

Many of those who have reviewed this book to date have marked it down as insufficient for passing the associated certification exam. That may be, but I still think it's one of the best self-study programming books I've ever read - and I've worked my way carefully through quite a few (including Wave Technology materials to prepare for the MCSD, Element K online tutorials for various products, and a number of independent books).

This is the third book on Visual Basic .NET that I've read (and worked with), so admittedly I'm not starting from scratch. Maybe that's the right preparation for this book: I can't say because I didn't read it first. But in any event I find its material exceptionally clear and focussed, and its quality far above the usual. An errata sheet is available online, and even with that, all bugs in the first 250 pages have been quite minor. In many programming books I've read, show-stopping bugs and the lack of a feedback loop with the author or publisher can run one's learning effort completely aground.

I LOVE the fact that you can use this book to learn Visual Basic.NET *or* C#.NET - or both in parallel. The material is structured as follows: first, a concept is introduced in text; then the Visual Basic code is provided; then the C# code; then any differences in the facilities available in the two languages are noted and discussed. If you like, you can easily ignore the material on either of the languages addressed; but I find myself looking at the C# code out of curiosity, and being quite delighted to discover that I can understand it without difficulty, even though I have little background in C++. The parallel treatment of VB and C# really underscores how close together .NET has brought the different programming languages that support it, so that they now constitute a relatively superficial layer atop the application development tool set.

Addressing how the book might be improved: the only thing that comes to mind is that I would like to see even more "now you try it" labs provided. The ones that *are* provided are excellent, but I had to make up my own "lab" for much of the material on using the Trace and error handling objects, and I'd like to see more than one lab in the ADO.NET section. There's too much reading in that section before the invitation comes to try out some of the concepts discussed.

Notwithstanding those relatively minor deficiences, this book has provided, for me, a *very* positive first exposure to the exam prep tools provided by Microsoft Press. I don't know if all their materials are this good, but you can bet I'm going to look at their offerings first in the future. I paid ten times as much for some Wave Technology materials that were, at best, no better than this.

For the record, I have no formal association with Microsoft and have never received a nickle from them for anything I've said or done. I just think this is a very good self-study programming book.

I just passed the C# and VB.NET tests. The C# test is the harder of the two. About 30% of the C# test is about ADO.NET. I would recommend an additional supplement in regards to data access objects. I passed the tests by memorizing this book and then using the internet to clarify topics that are poorly explained in the book or have typos in the examples (ADO, VB event handlers, command line params, component creation). Also, don't worry about the section concerning System.Drawing - I didn't see any graphics related questions on either test.

The concept of this book is great, but execution is too sloppy. After reading through the first few pages, I discovered a number of errors in the sample code.

Even the sample chapter posted on the MS Press web page is wrong! According to the sample chapter, a form's Activate() method is called Activate() in VB.NET, and Active() in C#. Rubbish! And this is in the very paragraph that explains Activate(), and the two samples are two lines appart! It hurts when you look at the thing!

Another example is the section that explains how to return a value from a method. Can anyone explain to me how the following code would ever return a value?:

public int Add(int first, int second)
{
int Result;
Result = first + second;
}

This raises a compiler error immediately for the very reason that no value is returned! And that's in the example that explains how to return values!!! The VB.NET sample has the same probem.

Or has anyone ever seen a variable declaration like this in VB.NET:

Dim x,y integer

Hello?!? If they at least would have typed this into the VB editor it would have immediately been flagged as wrong (AS keyword, anyone?)!

Bottom line, this book explains a lot of good things, but the code samples are too sloppy. People that don't know this stuff already will be confused at best. People that DO know this stuff don't have much of a reason to read this.

In all fairness, I have to admit that this book does cover things I didn't know before (hence two stars instead of one), and if you feel comfortable that you can straighten out the code samples on your own, you might get some value out of this.

At the end of the day, I am not going to give this book to my employees to learn. It simply isn't a good vehicle for that purpose. And quite frankly: For the price of this, I would have expected it to be!

I recently passed the VB.NET (70-306) and C# (70-316) exams by studying this book and the ADO.NET core reference. The examples in the book are of little real-world help, but they get the point across. The sample questions are pretty right on as far as prepping you for the test; the only bad thing is that the answers/explanations don't come with the questions, which is a bit of a pain. All of the questions that I saw on the exams were covered to some degree in the book - some more than others, so you have to pay attention to the fine print. More than once a single sentance in the book translated to a full question on the exam. The book at least gives you a starting point on what to look for.
The ADO.NET chapters are good, but are not enough to cover everything on the exam in any detail. The ADO.NET core reference is BORING, but it gets the job done. If VB.NET is your 'thang' then also look into "Coding Techniques for Visual Basic .NET", I found it to be very well written and the in-book examples are excellent. Hope this helps and GL!

This is a training guide - it does exactly what it says on the cover. It is not a full technical reference and it is not an exam cram; some of the reviews here do not accept this book's basic aim. For under ($$$) you get a hardback book, a CD with decent exam questions on it (not like some of the rubbish I've seen), and a trial copy of Visual Studio to work with; a pretty reasonable price all in all.

If you are using this book to help pass the exam then you need to be aware that the sections on debugging and deployment are not sufficiently detailed enough and you will need to access supplemental information in these areas (hence 4 stars not 5). You do need to spend a lot of time using visual studio between chapters to cement the information in your mind; but the basic training in the book is sound.

I sat the exam and passed first time by using this book and playing around with the development environment; more importantly it gave me a good grounding in all of the key areas. This, I think, says it all ...

I bought this book to study for the VB.NET exam - it's a mixed bag. If you're not already experienced in VB.NET (almost no one is at this point) you can't learn enough to pass the test by reading this book. It treats exam topics lightly.

However, having said all that, there is some value in having all the exam topics outlined and presented in one place, even if much further study from other sources will be required.

If I had it all to do again, I'd spend my money on other titles, using the study outline from Microsoft's certification web site for guidance. (I'm reading Francesco Balena's Programming Microsoft Visual Basic.NET right now, also from Microsoft Press. Balena's book is a winner!)

This book was ok from a stand point of giving you a high-level overview of the main subject areas covered by the test. However, it does not go into enough detail on most concepts and doesn't provide any references for the reading to do further reasearch.

Also, I found the mix of VB.net and C# examples to be distracting. You have to pre-read each section to see if it applies to the test that you're studying for and then skip over the sections that are not relevent. However on the positive side, the book is an excellent comparison of the language difference between VB.net and C#.

My other complaint about this book is the test prep software that comes with the book. It tries to simulate the actual exam to the point where it doesn't give you any options for how many questions to ask and it doesn't tell you which questions you got wrong. Thus you cannot use the practice exams to identify areas that you need more time studying.

If you buy this book, definately suppliment your studies with actual practice, reading the MSDN Docs, and purchase some 3rd party test prep software.

Could someone publish a list of supplementary books necessary to pass the exam?

Thanks

Mingming

I just passed C# exam. The book serves as a good introductory material and outlines the scope of test. However, you need to supplement it with other books. Write some code to gain proficiency in concepts. Most of the questions on the test are of "problem solving" type. If your concepts are clear, you should breeze through the test.

Best of Luck.

I just passed C# exam. The book serves as a good introductory material and outlines the scope of test. However, you need to supplement it with other books. Write some code to gain proficiency in concepts. Most of the questions on the test are of "problem solving" type. If your concepts are clear, you should breeze through the test.

The information in the book is designed for those with no practical experience. If you expect to pass the exam... skip this one! This book doesn't come close to the complexities covered on the exam... moreover most of the code and definitions are copied directly from the online help with VS.NET...

Microsoft's guide for the 70-306/70-316 exams is just that an exam guide. Since I am new to VB .Net programming, I am supplementing it with another book, Programming VB .Net: A Guide for Experienced Programmers, from Apress and making extensive use of the online help; so far so good. Although it reads like a textbook, it offers a structured approach to learning the language and I have enjoyed working through the examples which are in both VB and C#. Of course, it supposedly prepares you for the exam, which I have yet to take. My advice is if you are new to either language and have a desire to obtain the MCAD certification, do what I am doing and buy a second book, sit down in front of you computer and read both. Use the online help as much as possible, which is quite good, and do as much programming as possible.