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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty decent book that covers distributed technologies in .NET environment, March 24, 2007
This review is from: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-529): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Application Development (Pro-Certification) (Hardcover)
Having worked in distributed technologies in mostly Unix based environment for about 15 years and about 2 years in .NET, I thought it is a good idea to see how the technologies compare in both the cross-platform environments. So that was my original motivation to buy this book so I could gain/reinforce my knowledge in .NET based distributed technologies and compare it to Unix cousins.
As I kept reading the book, I was bit intrigued and figured may be I should appear for exam for the kicks.
I must say they did a very good job of it though there are multiple errors in the book and also in the question bank (for e.g., most of WSE related questions were based on WSE 2.0 as opposed to WSE 3.0). And some of questions were even duplicate. Though at times it was irritating, it did not stop me from making progress, however. Basically, it forced me to refer to MSDN articles and .NET 2.0 documentation.
If one wants to be knowledgeable in these technologies, one needs to supplement the information in this book with the following material:
1. Programming .NET Components, 2nd Edition by Juval Lowy -- an excellent book for asynchronous calls, delegates, remoting and security
2. Expert Service-Oriented Architecture in C# 2005 -- excellent book for Web services and WSE 3.0
3. Pro MSMQ (Microsoft message Queue Programming) by Arohi Redkar et al. -- Excellent book for MSMQ 3.0
Of course, nothing to beat hands-on experience as mastering these technologies is not a trivial effort at all.
Anways, the exam had 40 questions and about 160 minutes to finish it. Passing score was 700 (I have no clue how they calculate this score). I got a score of 858 though I must admit it was lot of hard work and patience.
Yes, I recommend this book as it is the only game in town. I could have rated it 5 stars if they QA'ed the contents a bit more and that is a shame.
Good luck with it.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of errors, February 8, 2007
This review is from: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-529): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Application Development (Pro-Certification) (Hardcover)
There are many, many errors in this book.
I question whether it is about .NET 2.0 at all. One whole section relates to calling web services in .NET 1.x (Beginxxx and Endxxx) which is NOT posible in .NET 2.0 web services (unless you reconfigure it manually, which is not explained). It looks like it has been cut-pasted from the 1.x book. Then they start to rant on about .NET 3.0 and WCF??? What is the book REALLY about??
They have overly complicated some topics and overly simplify others. Showing masses of code does not help people learn, unless it is explained. Most of the chapters seem to be out of order. They introduce a topic and then show some code, where large parts of the code are not explained until a later chapter.
They also use lots of references to web sites. This is a cop-out, they need to explain things not just give web links.
The authors 'Real Life' sections escape me too... some of these have no relationship to anything covered in the topic at all. One in particular was something like 'hey, I did this project and then learnt about Web Services, so they are really cool' ??? What the ???
Also, considering the book was written bypeople who are not even MCTS qualified... I am not surprised that the book is junk.
Get the book if you are only interested in the exam, but otherwise, find something better written if you actually want to learn about the technology.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overall Good Preparation for Exam, June 14, 2007
This review is from: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-529): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Application Development (Pro-Certification) (Hardcover)
This kit is designed for a developer that plans to take the MCTS exam 70-529. The book assumes that you are comfortable working with the Visual Studio IDE, are familiar with object oriented programming, and have worked with SQL Server. The book is well laid out for someone studying for the MCTS exam. At the time of the writing of this review, this is the only book designed for the purpose of preparing you for the the 70-529 exam.
The book is broken up into the following areas. Each area coincides with a main learning objective.
* Creating and accessing XML web services
* Configuring and customizing an XML web service application
* Creating, configuring, and deploying remoting applications
* Implementing asynchronous calls and remoting events
* Implementing WSE3
* Creating and accessing serviced components and message queuing
As well as the book, the kit consists of a practice test engine with a pool of 300 realistic test questions. The CD that the test software is on also includes an e-book version of this book in case you need to travel light.
There are 13 chapters with 739 pages of information laid out in a very usable manner. This layout follows the best teaching practice of "tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell it to them. And then tell them what you just told them." This repetitive approach is very good for reinforcing the important concepts.
Each chapter starts with the exam objectives and is broken up into lessons which should typically take from 20 to 45 minutes to accomplish. Each lesson develops a topic and usually includes a thorough walkthrough of how you would accomplish a task. At the end of each lesson is a summary, which is an overview of the main points of the lesson. This is followed by a lesson review which includes questions for you to think about and answer.
At the end of each chapter is the chapter review, the chapter summary, key terms, case scenarios, and suggested practices. As you can see, the chapters tend to thoroughly cover the material.
I had never created and used a web service before, yet I was able to follow the instructions in the first lesson and have one created and configured in less than a half hour. I even learned a few good lessons such as what can happen if you don't change the default namespace before deploying the service.
As with any technology book covering a topic this broad with rapidly evolving technologies there were a few inaccuracies. I think most of these issues were changes between versions of WSE and .NET. All in all, this was a well written book that covers a lot of material in an easy to understand manner. If you are planning to take the 70-529 MCTS exam, then you need to get this Training Kit.
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