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| Publisher: |
Microsoft Press |
| Author: |
Sarah Morgan, Bill Ryan, and Shannon Horn |
| Hardcover: |
739 pages |
| Level: |
Experience with VS 2005, OOP, and SQL Server |
Readability:  |
Layout:  |
Examples: |
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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