Customer Reviews

MCAD/MCSD Training Guide (70-306): Developing and Implementing Windows-Based Applications with Visual Basic.NET and Visual Studio.NET

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you are following the VB route towards the MCAD/MCSD .NET certification, you can't do better than with this book! I admit that I sometimes go a bit overboard on books, but I have tried several others and this one comes through as the best organized, most thorough and most error-free of all them. Lot of material here with probably more hands on excercises than you will care to do. Don't kid yourself that you'll go through this one in a week, but if you go through it conscientiously then you should be as ready for the exam as you ever would be from any other single source.

Example: The other sources that I went through all seemed to come up way short on ADO. The chapter on ADO in this book is very thorough and for purposes of the test, rates better than other dedicated resources that I have turned to. There are 35 hands on excercises just in this chapter and I am one of those folks who needs to do the hands on stuff. While a good understanding of ADO.NET goes pretty deep, doing these excercises made me feel like I had at least touched upon many of the things that can be done with ADO.NET. The book is sufficiently comprehensive and well organized that I will keep it around as a reference source. The other major area that always gets looked at is typos and mistakes. I am more than halfway through this book and can count the problems on less than five fingers. Last night I encountered a problem with an ADO excercise, emailed the author and he was back to me same day with an explanation!

If it sounds like I am a fan of this book .. I am! I have the author's book on the 70-305 Web Applications exam and have his book on VB.NET XML Web Services on advance order and, going on my experience with this book, my opinion is that most if not all of the material necessary to pass the exam is right here and is presented in a manner that will make you actually enjoy working with it.

I used this book to prepare for the VB.Net (70-306) Certification exam and I think it's a good one.

The book gives you a great roadmap to Certification--showing you (with almost perfect accuracy) what's on the exam and giving you just enough information to properly prepare.

Don't use this book to learn VB.Net--that's not what it's for. But use it, in conjunction with a good study group (such as one of mine) and an exam simulator such as Transcender, to understand the breadth of knowledge required to pass the exam.

The book breaks the major objectives of the exam into sections that it then deals with chapter by chapter. The author's knowledge is obvious--and what I really liked about the book is that he doesn't waste a lot of time trying to impress you with hard to follow code examples.

The code examples, for the most part, are short and sweet---and he follows these up with multiple Step-By-Step exercises interspersed throughout the chapter, and several follow up exercises to complete on your own. In addition, each chapter has a Self Test section that has some excellent exam type questions to further test your knowledge.

As I indicated, I used this book to successfully prepare for the exam---it's the best one on the market that I've seen.

Of course, every book has some minor glitches--I've compiled a list of errata and posted it on my website here

http://www.johnsmiley.com/mybooks/0789728192/errata.htm

John Smiley

This is by far the best VB.NET study guide on the market. It's thorough, has great excercises and sample questions, and is sufficiently detailed to help you pass the exam.

I did find a couple typos and wrong answers in the book, but everytime I emailed the author for clarification I got a response back within 24 hours. This is one of the best study guides I've seen, not just on the subject of VB.NET, but in general.

I read the Sybex 70-305/70-306 book by Brian Reismann and Mitch Ruebush first and it left a lot of gaps needing to be filled in.
I only read about 1/2 of this book, mostly focusing in on the sections on Data Binding and ADO.Net. This book gave a much more in-depth look at ADO.Net which I was very satisfied with. It also covered some areas that were totally left out in the Sybex book. It goes into much more depth and gives more adequate explanations than the Sybex book. The author is a very good writer, but starts out at a beginner level, so more advanced developers will need to skip over a lot of material. The level he writes at was helpful for me since many of the subjects covered are completely new to me, like ADO.Net and designing applications for security. I also bought the Transcender practice tests and the TransTrainer video. I highly recommend reading this book, then taking the Transcender tests. The Preplogic exam included with this book is not very good, although the exams that came with the Sybex book were excellent, almost on par with the Transcender tests. I passed the Microsoft 70-306 exam with a score of 800.

I'm not an industry insider and have no involvement in the making of this book, my aim was to understand the contents of the curriculum for the 70-306 exam and obviously to pass (which I did, first time)
This is a great book, it's exceptionally well structured, it's full of thorough and well thought-out exercises. Every single step is detailed (nothing is omitted) and you will learn much, not least, how to use Visual Studio properly.

This book has very good review questions and a sample exam at the back which are really useful in getting you to think in a '.Net way' do not skip these they are important.

If you wish to understand .Net windows forms programming to a sufficient degree to pass the 70-306 you will not regret investing the time in reading this book. One reviewer reviewed the wrong book (he/she reviewed the one on Asp.net) another said that this was very poor and disappointing, an opinion which in my view is unsustainable particularly since he gives no fair explanation of why he was driven to give a damning verdict.
I emailed the author a couple of times about some things and he was very quick and generous in his replies. There are errors but there is an errata and any programmer who is aiming to become a .Net MCSD will be able to figure out why something isn't compiling.
I can safely and happily recommend this book to anyone who is serious. I supplemented reading it with the Transcender exam simulations and I found them extremely helpful too.

This book has quite a few examples. It's obvious that the author cut-and-pasted them, and no one checked 'em. I'd say 85% of the exercises work. Many are flawed by obvious typos, missing, or superflous code, such as declaring variables twice in different scopes. Overall, not a bad book, but not a great one. Ironically the 70-310 book by the same author and editor is much better, though it's a bit weak on ADO.Net.

Although this book is 'ok' compared to other 70-306 books it fails at teaching at a level that is good for either beginners or for experienced programmers.

For starters it was written back in 2003. In my experience most VB.Net code written for Visual Studio 2003 in these books are less than great in Visual Studio 2005. If there was a CD that contained the code at least you could tell whether it compiles or not. Since they didn't, you will have to spend the time entering the code and debugging it yourself. There are a ton of programming books out there where you have to worry about a typo, poor directions or code, or a single mistake will cause the program to never to work without alot of effort debugging and this is one of them.

If you get this book get it only for skim reading on the objectives for 70-306 and for some idea on what is on the test. If you wish to find good sample code(included on a CD) and learn VB.Net, find another book that was written at least in 2005.

In any case you will need other books to know enough to pass 70-306 and or learn VB.Net.

Yes, the exam covers all the chapters described in the book. So, take your time, do not rush into the end, pay extra careful attention to the details and, certainly, it will be of great help during the test taking. This book really prepares you to suceed in the exam and also to improve your actual programming techniques. Good luck!

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

Even thou this book is written to prepare you for the MS Web Applications Exam, I consider is a good overall reference. I have not taken the exam yet, so I can't really qualify the preparation of this book. Also and very important, people who buy this book should have a basic knowledge of VB at least to understand the code. This is more like an intermadiate book.