Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 6 Certification Exam Guide

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

... but not enough for the exam.

This book is great for a relatively inexperienced programmer to quickly expand their knowledge with examples.

Its biggest flaw is that it really is not sufficient, on its own, to prepare for the exam certification. The cover states "Everything you need to pass Microsoft's Visual Basic 6 Certification Exam". The "blurb" on the cover is, in my opinion, overly ambitious and the contents do not fully realise this ambition. If you are interested in the Microsoft Certification, then this book is a useful supplement only. You will need to have another serious reference with this "guide" serving as backup.

If you are inexperienced and starting a new job as a VB programmer this is an excellent way to rapidly ramp up your knowledge and experience and a very useful reference. However, once you are up to speed and want to take your knowledge to the next level, even just for certification, you will then see the limitations of this "All in one" book.

THE BOTTOM LINE - if you want it to rapidly expand your basic VB programming experience this performs well, however, if you do want a complete "VB Certification" book to prepare you for the MCP's, this is DEFINITELY NOT the book for you unless you want it to supplement your study of another book/course.

The only materials I used to prep for the VB6 Distributed exam was Trancender's VB6 simulation exams - and this book. I had already been using VB for about 2 years and this is the only "VB6" book that I own that is not MTS specific. After taking some sample tests I beefed up on any "weak" areas using this book. It is great for finding short, hands-on examples of projects that will teach you exam objectives but not of much use for the experienced VB programmer who wants a more in-depth or advanced resource.

This was one of the first study guides around for this exam and it shows. It has all the hallmarks of having been rushed into print. It is riddled with typos but worse still is the information which is just plain wrong. Sometimes it is obviously wrong but sometimes you can spend hours working out the truth. Furthermore, the authors do not seem to know at what level to pitch this book: in some places they make a meal out of drumming in some point which is blatantly obvious and in others they glibly skim over a topic leaving the reader to attempt to infer their meaning. Get Hawhee's book from New Riders (ISBN 0-7357-0002-8): it is not perfect but it is miles better than this.

If you are looking for a good book to study for the VB 6 exams, this is not it. This book had so many errors and missed several key components that were on the test. I returned my book and got my money back.

I found the book to be a satisfactory study guide, with two caveats. First, it should have more info on MTS (this is heavily tested on the Distributed Exam). Second, it should have more info on the Package and Deployment Wizard (this is heavily tested on the Desktop exam)

Bottom Line: I passed BOTH VB6 exams (on the same day) after reading this book and doing no other studying. I didn't bother doing the interactive examples (I hadn't even installed VB6 on my PC when I took the exams).

Background: I have 2 years experience developing enterprise applications with VB. Note that I had already attained VB5 certification before I took the VB6 exams.

Complaint: Don't bash books for typos, poor examples, or bad design if you can't even structure your complaint using proper grammar, complete sentences, etc. It's a disgrace to our profession and does little to demonstrate your ability to judge the offending material. You know who you are.

This book looks good, but as I used it to study I found some big issues.

First, it's poorly edited.

I found many typos, and the answers to the test exam for Chapter 13 are WRONG.

In some cases they offered information that did not work. For instance, I could not get the "WriteProperties" event to fire for a persistable public class even though I followed their instructions to the letter (this may be a VB6 bug).

Second, the authors claim to have covered skills in the exam matrix in certain chapters. However, after reading those chapters I found they hadn't covered them at all. A good example is the 70-176(21) skill (Using the Visual Component Manager). They were supposed to have covered this in Chapter 21, but included only a passing reference to it.

If you use this book, you'd better double-check everything the authors say, and you'll need to refer to VB's documentation and other sources to get the full dope.

It is definitely not "Everything You Need to Pass Microsoft's Visual Basic 6 Certification Exam." In fact, the authors barely seem to recognize that there are now actually two VB6 exams, 70-176(Desktop Apps) and 70-175(Distributed Apps).

First the bad news: the book is not much more than a quick update of a previous VB5 text. Newer features of VB6 are included, but the authors fail to cover Microsoft's big push to differentiate between developing VB desktop and distributed(enterprise) applications. You might be able to use this book to sneak through the 70-176 exam (if you supplement it with some additional material on ADO and the Package and Deployment Wizard), but you'll probably get hammered on the 70-175 exam.

Secondly, the "practice test" on the CD-ROM is not representative at all. Again, it's mostly their old VB5 questions, with virtually no VB6 topics, desktop or distributed. Also, the question formats are all "quick hitters", but the actual MS exams use some fairly involved scenarios.

Now a little good news: even though it's not such a great exam prep book, it is very good for learning VB. The discussions are very readable and the programming advice is good. The exercises are also worth doing, especially for beginners. However, the index is so pathetic that it makes the book very difficult to use as a desktop reference -- you'll have to slog back thru the whole book every time just to find those cool programming tricks that you read about the first time.

In summary, I think this book got rushed to market like most every other computer reference. With some redesign, the next revision might actually be pretty good. However, since I really was looking for an exam prep guide, I can't help but feel ripped off.

This was my first MCSD book purchase and I was disappointedright out of the starting gate. There are multiple typos. Some ofthe information given in the book is misleading or incorrect. The software that is supposed to be on the CD ISN'T THERE, you have to download it. And it's not very professional looking. I started a list of typos, corrections, problems, etc and quit after the first few chapters.

Quite frankly if anyone gave this book more than 2 stars then they obviously aren't very good programmers. If you want a GOOD book, Try NEW RIDERS Training Guide MCSD Visual Basic 6 Exams. ISBN 0-7357-0002-8. THAT IS WHAT AN MCSD book should be. this book is VERY disappointing.

This book ROCKS! And The Author ROCKS! A well presened, well written book on Dan Mezick's part. Its exercises and demonstrations laid a firm foundation in the fundamentals of Visual Basic. Never a dull moment, This book written by the most experienced, entertaining, captivating authors in the technology market. The only thing that comes even close to this book is seeing Mezick presenting live, but thats a scary proposition in it self!

Want to get certified. This can't be your only source and hope to pass. Mixing the 175&176 subjects is confusing for study but all in all it provides good coverage of most subject matter included on the test. Sample test is not a good reflection of the actual exam so WATCH OUT. If you want to pass the certs get this book (to start with), a certified practice exam and read ALOT of the MSDN information.