Customer Reviews

MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-529): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Application Development (Pro-Certification)

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is the only book available (at the time of this writing) for the MCTS 70-529 exam. So far I have taken exam 70-536 using the MS Press books and am preparing to take the exam for this one.

I have found the MS Press books to be effective reference books in the work place. I have opened them up many times. The material in this one, like in the 70-536 book cover much of the day-to-day tasks that a .NET developer would need to do at work.

The electronic version of the book on the CD-ROM is great! I also thinks that the MeasureUp practice questions were very helpful.

The reason for the 4 star rating is that the book is not exactly going to cover the types of things you will be asked on the exam.

My suggestion, if you are planning to take the exam, would be to study much of the tasks that it only covers in brief. Do ALL of the examples! Using this book in conjunction with the MSDN website, and the MeasureUp practice exams will be solid preparation for the exam.

If you are planning on taking the exam related to this book, you'll need some supplemental materials. It's a little light in some areas that the exam covers closely. There are too many to mention specifically. I'm still in the process of looking for supplemental material to help me pass this exam and learn the material.

I have to agree with the previous reviewer on all counts. Compared to the two other MCTS books I've read (app dev foundation, windows forms) this one is very poorly structured. There are obvious holes in the code examples given, and they often trickle a code example out bit by bit and never show you the in tact code. I'm a professional developer and I would not recommend this book for anyone wishing not only to get a certificate, but to actually deeply understand the concepts and be able to REALLY use them on the job. Until better prep books for this exam are available, I recommend heavy use of MSDN while you are making your way through this book to fill in all of the gaps. (Some chapters are better than others)

I would actually rate this book 3.5. It's a decent enough book to keep your preparation more structured, focused and on track towards clearing the exam. Remember, it's easy to get lost in MSDN. There are a few obvious typos which are easily spotted. A few of the topics covered need to be supplemented with additional information in MSDN. And I think William Ryan is the worst author of them all.

I recently cleared this exam so in case you are still working on it (instead of 70-503) here's what I did:

- Read this book cover to cover.

- Finished most of the Hands-On-Lab excercises.

- Supplemented some of the topics namely:
Custom Soap Headers/Extensions, .NET Remoting (w/ MSDN Samples), WSE 3.0 (Custom Policy Assertions, WS-Security, SoapFilters, WS-Messaging etc) from MSDN and WSE 3.0 Documentation.

- Coverage of Serviced Components/Enterprise Services/MSMQ is adequate from the exam perspective, although I did lookup some of the classes in MSDN.

- Took practice tests directly from MeasureUp (Practice Test/Exam voucher combo). Did not use the practice test on the CD.

- Took me about a month to prepare. Though I have some prior experience of building distributed applications.

The actual exam duration is 125 mins. Total of 40 questions. Passing score of 700 out of 1000. I got a score of 953 and probably 2 questions wrong.

Hope it helps and best of luck!

Here's a response to the comment made by 'pturner75':
You can use BeginXXX and EndXXX methods to invoke web services asynchronously in .NET 2.0. Just generate your proxies using wsdl.exe or wsewsdl3.exe instead of relying on auto-generated VisualStudio proxies (via web-references).

This book really is very bad. Lots of the code samples
will not compile in C#.

I originally gave this review two stars. But after reading
all of it, I gave it one. The worse author is Shannon Horn,
who asks easy questions and is very verbose. He repeats the
same questions asked in previous questions.

Also, the C# samples have lots of bugs, syntax errors, and a
lot will not compile. Not to mention that lots of
the explanations do not cover how to use the tools.

Sara Morgan dropped the ball on this one. Hopefully Microsoft
will hire the same authors from 70-526, and 70-528 for
the next Web Service exam.

I am disappointed in the level of detail that is provided in this book. The book is divided into three areas, web services, remoting, and serviced components. The book did not spend any time on windows services. The remoting and serviced components chapters were weak.

Fortunately, I was able resort to another book in my library entitled, "70-320 Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Visual C#.Net and the .Net Framework" by Amit Kalani. That books provides a wealth of information on windows services, .Net remoting, and serviced components. You should start there, then read this book.

Then, download WSE 3.0 from MSDN and review all the sample applications after you read Chapters 9, 10 and 11 in this book. The samples will help you understand the various WSE 3.0 security scenarios. Pay attention to the comments in the samples. They are helpful.

Also, download the WSE 3.0 Hands on Lab and review it as well. Be careful with Lesson 1, Advanced WSE 3.0 Messaging. This lesson describes how to implement an soap smtp transport for messaging. It advises you to use your smtp and pop servers. It works. However, when the soap smtp service reads your pop account, it deletes all your emails, because its downloading them to your very weak sample client. Use an account that does not have important emails in it.

Finally, after you read the chapters on serviced components, refer to Amit Kalani's book again (referenced above). His discussion on serviced components is far more informative.

especially the chapter about Web Services Enhancements is so poorly written. Many mistakes, wrong pictures and unexplained examples. Very disappointed.