Customer Reviews

MCSD Training Guide: Visual Basic 6 Exams

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book is the best yet published for preparing for exam 70-176, desktop applications. Many books, particularly the Microsoft Press books, cover only a subset of the exam objectives. Hawhee covers them all and covers them with a minimum of fluff. The exercises in Hawhee will help those without VB development experience gain some of the hands-on experience they need to be successful. The exam questions Hawhee includes are quite close in terms of difficulty to what you'll face on the exam. There's two groups of folks who'll probably be unhappy: those who are annoyed by typos and those preparing for exam 70-175, distributed applications. If you're one of those folks who gets annoyed by typos, why not go with a book that doesn't prepare you as well but has fewer errors? You'll be happier. For exam 70-175, there is not yet an adquate exam prep book. You'll want to work with books specifically on MTS, COM and ADO or spend some time with the MSDN docs.

This is a great book. Its one of the easiest to follow and understand. Very well written (except for some typos, but that's OK). If you are looking to understand stuff quick, this book is it. The only downside is that it is way too big! You get bored soon and stop paying attention. Plus it covers maybe 60% more than the exam needs. For example, the questions on MTS in the exam can be covered in about 2 pages or three worth of text in a book. But this book has two chapers on it! Too much detail! So halfway through I realised that I should use an exam cram and then use this book as support where necessary. The best is the MCSD VB6 Distributed Exam Cram which can be used even for the desktop exam since most of the material is the same anyway. That cram book is excellent! Just covers what is needed and no more! So use that and when you don't understand something go back to the big book. All in all, these two books would be your best bet. I passed the exam with 871 and I am new to VB!

Howard Hawhee's VB5 exam review (Que) was an outstanding resource for Visual Basic in general, not just for the test. It covered most every significant area of VB programming in a relatively easy-to-understand format. A few sections contained factual errors or were unclearly written, however, and much, if not most, of the sample code was incorrect. Sometimes it was simple syntax errors -- more often, the code samples had fatal flaws in design. For more confident readers, this could cause confusion at first, and irritation after a while; for people relying on the VB5 exam guide to teach them the language, this could cause, literally, hours of anxiety and numerous consultations with both human and literary resources.

Sample code should be perfect. No exceptions.

In many ways, the VB6 edition (New Riders) is even better than the VB5, but it is characterized by a frustratingly high level of cut-and-paste laziness. Errors that never should have made it past a rough edit in the VB5 edition were included verbatim in the VB6 edition. Nonetheless, the book covers every subject on the exam, and covers them all rather well. The CD-ROM included with the book is excellent, the sample exam questions (both in the book and on the CD) are realistic and thorough, and the CD has the entire text of the book in a searchable Adobe reader format. It's a nice bonus. The "Fast Facts" section is the most useful appendix one could wish for, with all of the important elements of the book condensed into about thirty pages. It is an outstanding review, and very helpful to read right before going into the test. (The "Fast Facts" section seems to be a characteristic of New Riders' exam guides, and by itself should earn them the first look when considering exam guides on the market.)

This book would be excellent for anyone with some VB experience trying to prepare for the MCP exams. A novice would likely be confused by the errors, and find this exam guide lacking in VB fundamentals. (Although the book includes an appendix covering most of the essentials of VB, in general the text presumes a working knowledge of Visual Basic. The VB5 book did a better job of covering the basics.)

Overall, this is a good choice of exam guide. Hopefully, future editions/future printings will exhibit better proofreading and closer scrutiny of code samples. (So far at least two different publishing companies have failed miserably to ensure adequate editing of Mr. Hawhee's work.) The sample code should be taken with a grain of salt; the book as a whole, however, is good work, and valuable exam preparation.

I think a novice would be at risk in using this book, whether to learn Visual Basic, to prepare for the exams, or both.

Prospective buyers should know right up front that this book contains several inexcusable errors. Plan a solid half hour to download the errata from the publisher's website and then mark up the corrections before beginning to read. (The publisher's errata file is by no means comprehensive, however, so you must still be on your guard--and the downloadable PDF errata file itself was so poorly formatted that the text ran irreparably past the margins, and I had to guess at the missing words of several sentences.)

The CDROM-based practice exams provided with the book are marginal at best, and are no substitute for the Transcender exams (which I highly recommend). Some of the questions are either dead wrong or address topics completely ignored in the book (one purveyor of the MS documentation style is enough, thank you!). The inexperienced will learn erroneous things through the exams, and experienced VB users may soon question the value of their purchase.

In printing the user's incorrect exam answers for review, the software behaves more like a prototype than something for commercial release (developers: don't let this happen to you!), offering the user only the default printer and no control over page margins, font size, etc. This is just one of many "little things" that could have rendered the whole book/CD package a more professional product, had it been done right.

Having said all of the above, there are some good aspects of the book. It provides some useful coverage of most of VB's features, and it could certainly serve as a post-exam resource or refresher. But this is almost certainly not the best book to serve that purpose.

I'm not sorry I bought this book, but I'm disappointed in the product which it--together with the CD--comprises. The packaging is generally more professional than the package itself, and that's a bad reflection on both author Hawhee and publisher New Riders.

--TW

This book covers most all of what is needed for both exams. With this book combined with Transcender, you should pass both test easily. This book was my primary source of study of material for both exams and I did fairly well. If you are considering a VB certification book, I would strongly suggest using this one. If you are going for an MCSD, you might want to check-out the reviews on the other certification books in the MCSD Training series the publisher has put out - they all have very good reviews. I just wished they offered the MCSD 4-pack when I bought this book. Over the past several years I've read over a dozen books on VB and this is one of the few which impressed me.

Strong Points: * Very well written and easy to read. * A well structured book which follows the requirements of the exams. * Enough to pass exams. * Test Questions well done. * Great reference book for VB. * Good last minute review section. * Got COM? If not, then read this book.

There are a few weak areas about the book: * No coverage of N-tier development 5 - 7 tier development, which is on the distributed test. * Creating distributed media on CD (haven't seen this in any study guide, but there is a related question on the test). * Explaining DCOM vs MTS development. * There were of course some errors in the book, but nothing significantly bad. * Wish there were more on IIS and DHTML development, but since these were barely touched-on in the test, the information was enough. * This book was not around when I took the desk top test for the first time and had to use another book - and failed!

The readability of the book is very high the examples are well done. Don't let the 1300 pages scare you - remember there are two test - ie 1300/2 = 650 average pages per test. I used the book by reading all chapters except the ones for the distributed test, then took the Desktop Test. Next, I read the remaining few chapters and took the distributed test.

NOTE: Like all VB certification books, this is not a book for those just starting in VB; the reader should have a mid-level of knowledge of VB before beginning to study for the exams.

I took the 70-176 exam yesterday and passed on my first try. I purchased the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Development Mastering series and this book. This book was far superior. It provided all of the information that I needed to better understand the material for the exam.

This book had quite a few mistakes and the author could have included the exercises on the CD. However, if taking exams makes you extremely nervous, I would recommend the Transcender exams and this book. The Transcender exams are very close to the real thing. In fact, most of the questions on the exam resembled questions on Transcender practice exams. Transcender also provided complete detailed explanations of the topics and MSDN references. [....] Buy this book! It will provide a great reference for later on.

I passed 70-176 about a week or two ago. This book was 90% of my preparation efforts. I supplemented the book slightly with the MSDN Library which is available on the MSDN website. I didn't use the Transcender tests, but I can definitely see where they would be valuable in preparing for the test. (I just didn't want to spend $200 on something I would likely never use again after the test). This book, however, is great as a reference and as a study guide. I would have given it five stars but it is very weak on Packaging and Deployment, as everyone else has said. Really, Really study this book (that means LEARN, not become acquainted with) and you should be fine.

I am a VB developer who has worked with VB for about 3-4 years. So I decided to pick this book in terms of what it covered since it had both VB exams in the MCSD curriculum.

There was no need for me to get certified really. I just felt like doing it. So what can I tell you about this book??? I think it would be best to describe it in relating to you my test taking experience. I decided to take the 70-175 Distributed test first.

I failed. I got 685 and needed 728 (failed by 4.3%).

I then decied a month or so later to take the Desktop 70-176 exam

I failed. I got 700 and needed 714 (failed by 1.4%).

So how did the book help me?? I'll put it to you this way best in pros and cons.

PRO:

1) This is a great reference book in finding out properties of controls and what is covered for the exam, and some techniques.

2) It is organized very well.

3) You will learn things in VB (as I did) that you may never had needed, or never knew existed ( and you know what?? some of that is pretty COOL!).

CON: (there are MANY)

1) If you do not know VB at all, or god forbid programming you will not have a hope in hell of understanding this book.

2) The book is CHOC full of errors. Even the error list that you can get from the publishers web site doesn't cover all the mistakes

2a) Bad code in the examples that is just plain wrong or incomplete.

2b) Incorrect answers in the back of the book that either have the wrong answer highlighted (A when the explanation is answer B), or stuff that is plain wrong such as in Exercise 20.4 (Compiler Constants CONTRADICTS the fast fact for exam 70-176 page 1033, 'A value for a compiler option set in the command line overrides the value set in code' WRONG try the exercise!)

Now tech manuals are known for their mistakes, but if you need to know something as the CORRECT answer, and it is not given or worse WRONG, then you start having doubts about what you are learning. The numerous amount of errors in this book are INEXSCUSABLE!!!

3) Many of the examples have POOR instructions (Chapter 13 is notorious). I could figure out pretty much all of them, but if you don't know VB you will have a VERY hard time getting it.

4) Would it hurt to have the source code on the CD!! (they probably didn't do this cause they knew the examples provided were half a**)

5) The practice questions and exams fail CONSTANTLY to mention whether you should select more than one answer! You get the idea from then on that other questions are not neccesarily a one answer question. It is clear on the exam (you will get either SELECT ALL THAT APPLY, OR Select 2, 3 etc..)

6) The book makes NO NOTE of WHAT YOU NEED TO USE THIS BOOK! This has to be The ONLY tech book I have ever bought that DOES not tell you what you need (in terms of software). You will need SQL to do some of the exercises in Chapter 9, and you should do some of the exercises related to MTS with NT. If you don't have them, you are leaving out important information that you need to know in the exam. Did I mention you'd need at least VB professional??? Luckily I have all these things.

7) For exam 70-175 this book is too weak in areas of n-tier concepts and the MTS is not covered good enough. This book is not really geared towards this exam.

8) For exam 70-176 this book is weak on PDW. This book however, is geared more towards the Desktop exam.

9) The practice CD exams, Study cards etc.. have stuff that is NOT EVEN COVERED IN THE TEXT. You tell me in the book in Chapter 3 where they discuss Drag Drop events..

10) Many of the explanations to the answers in the practice test s on the CD examples tell you nothing in relation to the question.

11) Due to the numerous amount of controls and properties of controls in VB you can NOT memorize them all and the book CAN'T cover them all.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Other reviews I have read here, have expressed faults that I think are reliable as well.

So is my review biased cause i failed??? No... The simple reality is that I failed these exams for one simple reason.

I DO NOT.. and WILL NOT... remember anal things like, what setting is on what, tab under what option, under what menu item. OR EVEN WORSE.. What are all the parameters names, and values for event X (just one eg.).

Any programmer/developer who does this is NUTS! You show me something in VB and you say to me 'what is this' I either say it is blah, or I don't know but I'll check MSDN and get you your answer. I do not say, oh the setting on tab X under menu Y does this if blah blah blah. Give me a break...

There were also questions on the exam that I WOULD NEVER do in my applications (like use the Data Environment designer), so of course I don't know the names of all the events for a connection object and I am smart enough to know that I WOULD NEVER PUT CODE THERE IF YOU PUT A BULLET TO MY HEAD. Also I debug my program only a certain way.. thus questions on Watches I could care less.

So you think I am bitter. Well no I am not (seriously). Yes there were questions on the exams (both of them) that I had no idea what they were talking about. And I think some of the theory oriented stuff (I seem to get murdered on the Establishing the Development Environment section(s)), I look at as not applicaple to the REAL WORLD! Sure this is the optimal solution.. but your boss says, we don't have the cash or I WANT it this way period. I think this clouds my judgement on these questions.

So I can not recommend this book cause the cons are just too numerous. The best advice I can leave with you (if you are thinking of VB certification) is the following:

"Do not get certified in something you do not know".

Ecspecially if you do not know VB. Make sure that you have worked with ALL the concepts in this book fully in a real world environment and you wont even need a book to pass the exams.

And I know there's people out there who can just retain information and memorize stuff and pass tests like it is nothing. But it wont help you if you can memorize everything pass this test, and then get planted in front of a terminal and someone says make THIS. You will be screwed (or at least have to be retrained in what you supposedly already know).

There was someone here who posted that they had no knowledge of VB but passed both these exams. Unless this person is a programmer in a different language, I find this a very FRIGHTENING prospect. I know that I would never work for such an organization (or said individual) who matched the above description.

Hope this review has been helpful.

PS. Buy good tutorial books on VB and make stuff, don't study/buy this book if you want to pass the exam.

This is a very good book. Unlike so many other exam prep books, the authors display a deep understanding of VB and computing in general. You get help in passing the VB exams PLUS a deeper understanding of the subject itself. You can tell that the authors are interested in helping you become a better programmer and they have a lot to offer in the furtherance of that cause. Also, the material is presented in a comprehensive way. After you pass the tests, you will want to keep this book on the shelf as a reference. (There are a few errors. If you read carefully, you will spot them.) Here is something that I learned: the reviews that Amazon publishes are a goldmine of information. Getting past Microsoft certification is an important and difficult mission and if you embark on it with an inferior study guide, things are going to be rough: tear stains on your mouse pad -- deep teeth marks on the book itself. I found this excellent book by reading the Amazon reviews and I will never buy another computer book again without reading them first.

I almost stayed away from this book because of all the warnings about excessive typos. And they are there, but to me it really didn't detract much from the excellent teaching method consistent throughout most of the book. Having looked at quite a few others, I'd say this is the one to go with for the desktop exam. (I passed yesterday using this, Transcenders, and some of Exam Cram). You will definitely need to supplement this book with other materials (Transcenders is worth the high price) but I don't know what I would have done without Hawhee as my core reading. I hold back from giving it 5 stars only because of inadequate coverage of P&D Wizard. (Nobody else covers it well either. Everyone just walks you through it, but the test wants fairly extensive knowledge of the separate files.) All in all, however, I think if you're taking 70-176, Hawhee is superb, a must have.