Customer Reviews

MCAD/MCSD: Visual Basic .NET Windows and Web Applications Study Guide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this book to be an excellent resource in preparation for 70-305. Before reading this book I had done some reading on .net, and some light coding. I would say I knew enough to be dangerous, but not enough to accomplish anything productive.

That being said, this book covered exactly what I needed to get jump started in the language, and pass the test on my first try the next week.

I was very happy with the speed that this book covered the concepts needed for the test. Although the book covers a very broad range of topics, I felt like the concepts were presented in a way that let me put it all together.

Starting with language basic concepts, and data, the book then branches into windows forms, and then web forms. Security, optimization, and deployment are also covered in a good amount of detail.

I would highly suggest this for the beginning to intermediate vb.net developer looking to prepare for either of these tests.

Great book! Concise, logical flow and division of material, good exercises, good and lots of real-world test questions: Preliminary book and chapter test questions, end of chapter questions, a total of 4 separate sets of questions available in the testing software on the CD. (More questions overall than Transcender provides and I like Transcender). Having taken the test, I am really happy with the number and variety of the real-world test questions as that is what is primarily on the test. And of course this provides the background info for me to make better decisions within my apps.

I'm going for my mcdba and I found this book to help me pass the 306 exam. All i can say is - WOW! I do have quite a few other .net books but this one leaves NOTHING out! The authors present the material in plain english and the questions at the beginning and end of each chapter really show what I need to focus on. There's plenty of pictures so I'm not left wondering what I should be clicking on and the web sites they reference are actually very useful! The authors even put in tips to avoid a sql injection attack and they have the best explanation of the web.config file I've ever seen! Get this book!!!!

I just passed 70-305 and the only resource that I used was this book and VS.NET! I've written some basic programs using VB 6 and this book was great. The practice questions were immensely helpful and certainly indicative of the actual exams from Microsoft. If you are pursuing .NET certification, this book is a must have!

I passed both exams, 305/306. This book was especially valuable in how much of asp.net + vb.net is covered. However, the book is so riddled with painfully time-consuming errors, it may not be worth buying unless the authors actively do something about erratta (sp?). I would have passed my exam a full month in advance if the editor was doing any "editing" at all.
The errors I found and their approximate "cost" of my time are below.
P/Invoke ex, pg 243: alias should be "MessageBoxA" - 1hr
Interfaces, pg 215: Did not mention you must save your project before implementing an interface - 2hr
Class library pg 215: They didnt tell you to change your project type to class library, or else you cant register for COM Interop 3hr
CreateObject() pg 222: Author says no equivalent to CreateObject(), In fact this function is still available in .Net 1.1, not only that ... GetObject() is also there! 0hr
Cookies, book never explains more than one way to set a cookie 1hr
Web.Config pg 589 Authors did not put double quotes around word true, [identity impersonate=true], name value pairs in web.config are case sensitive and values must always have double quotes, without knowing that, cost me 4hr
assembly linker utility pg370 The /c switch is missing from call to al.exe, also the word Exercise is misspelled (Excsercise) 2hr
HTML Controls pg 610 Visual Studio automatically generates declarations for controls that you place on a web form, the book leaves me in the dark about this 20min
Dataset pg 145 The variable dsEmp has to be *public* scope, HTML can not see into the code behind without it! 2hr
Resource file pg 685 Resource file name is wrong! 2day
Anonymous pg 704 If you deny anonymous [deny users="?"] and enforce integrated authentication, no login dialog appears to access virtual directory. 1hr

Other more minor errors ...
pg 751 #5, fs.trace.close is incorrect 1hr
pg 756 #3, btsDim should not be there
pg xliii, pure typo, answer should be C (globalization and localization)
pg131, sqlcommandbuilder not required for typed datasets
pg 412, Not actually VB.Net code, this is C#

I found roughly twice as many more errors, but I quit tallying because I was basically fed up.

I passed Windows with score of 875, and Web with 905, thanks in large part to this book. Outside of the typos and errors that is, it was a big help. I also used practice exams from a friend. But, I didn't need them. This book has pretty good questions that very closely resemble what you will see on the real exam. However, many practice exam questions have the wrong answer, have duplicate answers, or simply have questions that are not complete. In the latter, you just guess something and look at the explanation.

If I did not have my 5+ years of previous experience in VB 6, I imagine that I would have struggled a lot with this. Maybe I would have quit. I rated this book 5 stars only because I actually passed my exam. Otherwise, I gets a zero or whatever the equivalent is.

Basic Summary:
As someone previously mentioned, if you know some programming already, this book is Ok. But, beginners will have a really hard time because of the errors, but not because of the level of difficulty. If you can tolerate the errors, go for it.

This Book is good for people who already have quite a bit of experience and only need an overview of the material required to pass the exams. I read this book first, then went to the ExamCram book by Mike Gunderloy. The ExamCram book filled in all the gaps left by this book, giving an excellent treatment of ADO.Net. The authors of this book are good writers and I think their goal was not to get into a lot of detail, but just to give readers a starting point for further study. I do like the style of the book, it is very well laid out and the Practice tests that come with the book are very good, almost as good as Transcender. I did buy the transcender tests/ Transtrainer video and they were also very helpful in passing the 70-306 exam with a score of 800.

Used this book along with other materials to pass 70-305. This is an OK book, but it is not written at the beginner level. The reader needs to be fairly advanced to pick up the information the way it is presented. Read another book first to get the concepts and high-level picture of ASP.NET and then start reading this book to focus on the test.

The sections in this book on the web.config file and debugging/tracing are well done as these topics are hit heavily in the test. The end of chapters review questions could be better, but they are decent.

I found this book to be an excellent resource in preparation for 70-305. Before reading this book I had done some reading on .net, and some light coding. I would say I knew enough to be dangerous, but not enough to accomplish anything productive.

That being said, this book covered exactly what I needed to get jump started in the language, and pass the test on my first try the next week.

I was very happy with the speed that this book covered the concepts needed for the test. Although the book covers a very broad range of topics, I felt like the concepts were presented in a way that let me put it all together.

Starting with language basic concepts, and data, the book then branches into windows forms, and then web forms. Security, optimization, and deployment are also covered in a good amount of detail.

I would highly suggest this for the beginning to intermediate vb.net developer looking to prepare for either of these tests.

I rarely give a book perfect score and this book will not break that rule. I took the 70-306 exam and passed on the first try, but I would be lying if I told you this book was the sole reason. I did Transcender and thoroughly devoured this book (chapter #1-12).This book covered perhaps 70-75% of the test I took.

Problems with book:

I wish they would use OPTION STRICT, none of the code will compile unless you have Option strict off, I think that is a mistake. I always code with option strict on

This book manages to cover the main subject matter for both exams.... having passed both 70-306 and 70-305 in October 2004, I can personally vouch for the teaching style this book offers. Although I agree that the content is somewhat light for 70-305, I believe it is because there is significant overlap on certain topics for both exams (especially with ADO.NET concepts). If you are a strong .NET developer, you may get away with simply using this book as a means to prepare for the exams. For most of us, however, building a foundation in VB .NET/ASP .NET with 1-2 other books (particulary those offered by O'Reilly, WROX(Wiley) or APRESS) is the best way to go prior to picking up this book. Moving forward to 70-310, I can only hope the "Sybex" approach continues to prove effective.