78 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Probably sufficient for the exam, September 24, 2002
By A Customer
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
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book!, September 15, 2002
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.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good study reference, sample questions pretty realistic, September 6, 2002
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!
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