This book was needed as a study guide for people at my company to take the MCP test. It is very informative with great examples.

great certification tool!!!
but u will need also transcenders for exam preparation. contact me on my gmail account (certstuff). i will send u a list of transcenders i can sell u, 10$ each one. thnks

this product is awesome,but ull need extra help to get cert.

you can get more help in this link

(getcert's POST)



http://www.mcse.ms/message2132798.html



thanks

this product is awesome,but ull need extra help to get cert.
you can get more help in this link
(getcert's POST)

http://www.mcse.ms/message2132798.html

thanks

I'm an experienced vb6 programmer and looked for a book to help me make the switch. I found this book diving into issues without giving you any prerequisites. I had a hard time understanding where he wants to take me.

This book has some highlights, but it is tightly authored to the VS.NET version it comes bundled with. Some folks will find this a bonanza, but that's only if you're willing to rubber-stamp your exam. There's abundance of Wizard code specific to VS.NET 2003 version. I am working with VC# Express 2005 and many of the things are N/A in this environment. ... anyway, I could sort my way out by looking at the samples and learn that what used to be a Control is nothing more than a Class that derives from Controls and some additional boilerplate.

To make things worst, this book assumes you will be using Wizards and dispenses any explanation on why / how things work.

In addition to all the above, by 11/2005 standards the book itself is dated as C# does include now support for generics, which is not present in this book.

I still do give it a 3 just because I like some of the stuff, and it simplifies a couple of learning points.

BTW: A good POV on using Wizards is here -->
http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html

I'd just like to say something. I finished reading this book from the very beginning a week ago to the very end this morning, and passed the exam with a score of 940 this afternoon. I don't know any other exam prep book for the same exam.

- Admittedly, the book is pretty shallow: it even teaches you what class/construstor/destructor/inheritance/etc are. To an old day VB'er unfamiliar with .NET/OOP stuff, or to any .NET beginner, this might be nice. But to most, especially to those specilized in C# (very likely also in C++), or to whoever is about to take an exam towards a certified developer, this is not necessary at all. I wish the book had covered some really advanced topics and/or gone deeper on existing topics.

- As for the exam, my personal opinion is that this book should be enough, as long as you also get some hands-on experience by actually messing around with .NET desktop apps for a while. Deskop apps are not my strong area and I rarely develop apps using .NET Windows Forms. But the book helped me with all the questions on the actual exam about desktop apps so I could pass the exam with ease. Without the book I doubt I could get the passing score of 700. A similar book might also help me that much, but I only needed one and this one was what I used.

- I'm not giving the book 5-star because this is going to be a useless book once read or once you passed the exam. I'm also not giving the book 3-star or lower because this is a well-written book after all, and with some hands-on experience, you should have little trouble passing the exam if you fully understand what the book tries to tell you.

I'd just like to say something. I finished reading this book from the very beginning a week ago to the very end this morning, and passed the exam with a score of 940 this afternoon. I don't know any other exam prep book for the same exam.

- Admittedly, the book is pretty shallow: it even teaches you what class/construstor/destructor/inheritance/etc are. To an old day VB'er unfamiliar with .NET/OOP stuff, or to any .NET beginner, this might be nice. But to most, especially to those specilized in C# (very likely also in C++), or to whoever is about to take an exam towards a certified developer, this is not necessary at all. I wish the book had covered some really advanced topics and/or gone deeper on existing topics.

- As for the exam, my personal opinion is that this book should be enough, as long as you also get some hands-on experience by actually messing around with .NET desktop apps for a while. Deskop apps are not my strong area and I rarely develop apps using .NET Windows Forms. But the book helped me with all the questions on the actual exam about desktop apps so I could pass the exam with ease. Without the book I doubt I could get the passing score of 700. A similar book might also help me that much, but I only needed one and this one was what I used.

- I'm not giving the book 5-star because this is going to be a useless book once read or once you passed the exam. I'm also not giving the book 3-star or lower because this is a well-written book after all, and with some hands-on experience, you should have little trouble passing the exam if you fully understand what the book tries to tell you.

I think that there are more interesting books about C# and MCP Certification.
The negative points of this books are:
- Are missing a lot of details of the .NET technology
- The sample codes are not complete, only show portions
- It is not enough to take an MCP test
Positive points are:
- It is a great book for introducing the .NET technology
- Contains a lot a sample questions oriented to take the MCP test

As a summary of the .NET technology, it is great!

I think that there are more interesting books about C# and MCP Certification.
The negative points of this books are:
- Are missing a lot of details of the .NET technology
- The sample codes are not complete, only show portions
- It is not enough to take an MCP test
Positive points are:
- It is a great book for introducing the .NET technology
- Contains a lot a sample questions oriented to take the MCP test

As a summary of the .NET technology, it is great!

I used this book for my MCSD test. I found this book is very useful and I got a very high score in my test.

I used this book for my MCSD test. I found this book is very useful and I got a very high score in my test.

This book only lightly touches on each exam requirement; there is very little depth. It is especially weak in the topics of ADO.NET, security, and testing/debugging. To prepare for the exam, I rolled my eyes, muttered "get it together, Microsoft" under my breath, and just used this book as an outline.

The bulk of my training came from the MSDN documentation, "ADO.NET Core Reference" (ISBN 0-7356-1423-7) by David Sceppa, and "Programming Visual Basic .NET" (ISBN 0-7356-1375-3) by Francesco Balena.

Also, for practice exams, try www.BrainBench.com. They sometimes have promotions for free exams, and the questions are MUCH harder than the actual Microsoft exams (although the objectives are not the same).

If you are EXCELLENT at reading Japanese stereo instructions and can put together children's toys by following the instructions LETTER FOR LETTER, this set is a great resource.

It is geared specifically at test passing. I bought the entire set, and have been writing VB code since 1993 and v3.0, and read through the first book. At that point, I paid $7175.00 to a training school (not a bootcamp, that's cheating) to learn how to use .NET right. Now that I have had a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer explain the "Microsoft Lingo" in real english, it all makes sense and I can read along with the book.

However, if Chinese Long Division is not your cup of tea, I would suggest you start with something written in English!

This book did not contain nearly enough information to pass the exam, nor do I think it should. If you want to pass the exam, DEVELOP APPLICATIONS, and practice! To pass the exam you will need to be comfortable with all the topics covered in this book and expand your knowledge in each area using MSDN. The only real way to get a good grasp on the topics covered in this book is to use VB.NET and do a lot of coding.

Nothing wrong with the content, but you will need much more to pass the exam. Code, code, code.....

Good Luck!

This book is only useful for the exam. I do not usually need it in my real life. There are some incomplete lines of code in this book.

The good thing is the set of questions included. It includes 100 questions that help to pass the exam. And many tips too.

It would be great if this book included more labs and that it covers all the chapters.

Some chapters are really shallow and many topics are not included in the book.

Save your time and get a better text or texts elsewhere. There is not enough meat here to pass an exam or tackle an projects of substance. There are better resources elsewhere.

The evaluation CD is a plus.

Overall, the book is fairly complete in its list of topics covered, and the labs do help some to tie together the concepts. However, they tend to fall short of driving the point home and in too many cases the reader is left to his own experimentation. It is written acceptably well, though sparsely in many cases, but requires more rereading than other books on similar topics. Having read Kalani's 70-315 book (for "Web.NET"), I'd suggest looking more closely at his 70-316 book.

This book gives a lot of information in a fairly condensed form. Sometimes, this is done in a fashion where you didn't realize a topic had been covered. The book seems to focus more on passing the test than going to the next level of trying to make sure you understand what is happening. I found myself rereading a lot, but to the book's credit, the reread did generally have some of the information that had not seemed readily apparent until reading through further parts.

If you are new to Windows development, read something else first. Presentation controls (textboxes, grids, etc.) are touched on briefly, but for the most part the book assumes some familiarity with visual designers, managing properties, available controls and their purpose. For example, the book states in chapter 2, "Because an in-depth discussion of the different controls and their functionality is beyond the scope of this book, you should familiarize yourself with the controls in the Toolbox and how they work." Most controls are never described, though many common ones do show up in examples eventually. The "beyond the scope of this book" disclaimer is also given in regards to using XmlDataDocuments (the class, not just the general concept of XML).

Personally, if it's a core piece of Windows Development and/or an objective of the test, I don't see how it can be outside the scope of the book.

The examples sometimes lack "connectivity". For example, its description of configuring trace switches might be a bit more readable to list the entire chunk of XML, e.g.,

rather than...

followed by descriptive text then

In many places information given is minimal. Exception handling, correctly, indicates that custom exceptions should inherit from the System.ApplicationException but makes no reference to why this should be used in lieu of System.SystemException.

Some topics seem to be written specifically for those people already familiar with the subject at hand--presumably not the target market. The relationship between XmlDataDocuments and Datasets at the end of chapter six is a good example of this.

Many of these things are small and possibly preferable for solely trying to pass the exam, but at the end of a chapter, it's a bit difficult to know whether or not you've really picked up what you should have.

Expanding the minimal code snippets into exercises throughout the chapters rather than tying the entire thing together in one or two "labs" at the end might also help to better reinforce the information.

At a rough guess, about 15% of the material on the test was not discussed in the book or was glossed over to the point that the topic did not seem familiar to me. There were a number of times that I wound up reviewing notes from the 70-315 exam book or searching the help file for information that should've been there. Another 100 or so pages and dropping out the attempt to cover VB and C# in the same text would go a long way toward making this book better.

The book and the associated practice test were inadaquate as study materials for the cert test. I passed the test, but only because I review the material on the MSDN website and perform labs if I am not doing the work on the job. Skim the book, then write your programs and study from Microsoft's site.

This text is PITIFUL.

In preparation for the 70-316 exam, I covered the entire text - did all of the labs, spent time reviewing. I know the textbook material solidly.

This weekend, I started using the sample exam questions that came with the Microsoft MCSD kit (and the Transcender pack.) To my shock, I'm consistently scoring 60%.

The problem is that SO much material on the exams is not covered in the textbook. Just from memory, here are some of the questions I've encountered that AREN'T in the textbook:

* Panel controls
* ToolBar controls
* XML validation
* XML elements and nodes
* COM+ components
* Authenticode signatures
* RegAsm and RegSvr32
* Packaging issues, like .MSI vs. .CAB, and merge modules

I'm just getting HAMMERED by questions that aren't discussed in the textbook. These topics don't even appear in the index! How can the electronic review questions BUNDLED WITH THE TEXTBOOK test on material that's not in the text?

So now I've spent a month prepping, and I'm *still* not ready for the exam. I've spent $650 on review materials, and now I need to buy another textbook. This is awful and horribly frustrating.

- David Stein

I took a MCSD cert training course that used this series of books. I felt that as the books were published by MS and the exams were written by MS that the book content could have covered the subject much better. I was taking the exams for C# and many of the examples do not compile, obviously the examples were originally written in VB and someone 'hacked' the C# routines without bothering to check that they compiled before publishing. I guess I don't care for books that cover material in both VB/C# for this very reason, we (C# people) would be better off purchasing a VB book and porting it ourself.

I would suggest that you first take a look at the other exam cram books and study guides before using this series of books.

I tried to use the 15% discount in this book and was told by VUE that it IS NOT a valid voucher. The book itself was good, but does not cover some areas of VB.NET and C# in relation to SQL. The labs in the book are good, very few had to be debugged.

I bought this book as it was the first to come out covering preperations for the MCAD and MCSD. I read through the entire book and came out very disappointed. There are numerous typos for a start and the code style is often very inconsistent making the examples all the harder to read. The information is very light. Compared with some of the other options available such as Amit Kalani's MCAD/MCSD books there is only a grain on information. If you take the test soley on Microsoft's book I think you will find yourself woefully under prepared. Last, there are precious few questions, no tips, and little in the way of examples to work through. The book is a brief skim of topics that are covered in much better detail elsewhere. Don't waste your time with this one.

I'm a MCAD professional now, and this book helped a lot to pass the exam.

I've just passed the 70-306 exam and must say the this book helped me do it a lot more than either of the Microsoft Study guides that I used to pass other MS Cert Tests (70-300, 70-229) I've taken so far. Unlike the others, it seems to generally represent the exam content, at least to the extent that things that are emphasized in the book (at least to the best of my recollection) seemed to be emphasized in the exam.

As others have said, you can't expect that absolutely everything you will need to know to pass the exam will be spelled out in the book. Also like others, I found MSDN to be a very comprehensive and thorough source on how to build applications in the .NET environment and what .NET is all about.

So, use the book to point out the areas to work on, use MSDN to get the details, and practice writing apps. I can honestly say that that pretty much did it for me.

The weakness of the book is that, seemingly like all the Microsoft Guides, there's really no information on the makeup of the exam itself and any specifics on how to prepare. The practice test that came with the book was barely worth the investment of time that it takes to go through it. It had lots of typos and a significant percentage of the questions made little or no sense or could not really be answered from the information given.

It's a good reference but not enough for passing! Although it's much better in term of content that the books for 305 and 310 exams.
Again I think MSDN palys a great role (90%) if you really want to pass the exam.
You need at lease 1 year experience with VS.NET,.NET and last but not least XML/XSL/Schema.
Learn as much as you can regarding ADO.Net and Security in .NET.

I passed the test and officially became MCAD.
Good luck!

While this is a good primer to .Net programming for Windows, you will need more that this to pass the test, or do the job. The examples are good and easy to follow, but very simplified.

Good jumping off point if your new to .Net