| | |  | Database Management Systems | Home » » » MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft® .NET Framework Application Development Foundation, Second edition | | | | | | | Description: | | Your 2-in-1 Self-Paced Training Kit. Fully updated and revised! Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-536—and on the job. With this official Microsoft study guide, you’ll work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover each exam objective. Then reinforce and apply what you’ve learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises.
Maximize your performance on the exam by learning to:
- Develop applications that use system types and collections
- Validate input, reformat text, and extract data with regular expressions
- Create services and multi-threaded applications
- Implement code-access security and role-based security
- Implement serialization to read and write complex objects
- Leverage legacy code using interoperability
- Monitor and troubleshoot applications
- Create applications for a global audience
Practice Tests assess your skills with practice tests on CD. You can work through hundreds of questions using multiple testing modes to meet your specific learning needs. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers?including a customized learning path that describes how and where to focus your studies.
Your kit includes:
- 15% exam discount from Microsoft. Offer expires 12/31/13.
- Official self-paced study guide.
- Practice tests with multiple, customizable testing options and a learning plan based on your results.
- 300+ practice and review questions.
- Code samples in Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# on CD.
- Case scenarios, exercises, and best practices.
- 90-day evaluation of Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2008.
- Fully searchable eBook of this guide.
A Note Regarding the CD or DVD:
The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Tony Northrup | | Hardcover:
| 794 pages | | Publisher:
| Microsoft Press | | Publication Date:
| November 12, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0735626197 | | Product Length:
| 9.2 inches | | Product Width:
| 7.58 inches | | Product Height:
| 2.15 inches | | Product Weight:
| 3.31 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.7 inches | | Package Height:
| 2.3 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 39 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 39 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 40 found the following review helpful:
 Enough to Pass, a good starting point if you're looking for moreJan 15, 2009
By J. Comstock
Overall, if you're considering taking the 70-536 exam, I recommend getting this book (not that there are a lot of alternatives). It may contain a few errors (honestly, I don't recall anything significant, right off hand), but the 2nd edition definitely alleviates at least most of the scores of pages of errors found in the first edition. Don't get the cheaper old edition: it's worth it to pay for the updated version, if only to avoid having to go through the 50+ pages of errata with the first edition.
This book does not cover everything in the same depth as the test, so if this is your only study tool, don't expect to feel completely comfortable when taking the exam or expect to "ace" it. As other posters have stated, you will need to do some of your own research if getting every question right is your goal. However, using ONLY this book as a study tool you CAN pass. Passing was my goal, and to that effect, this book accomplished its purpose effectively.
The tests provided on the CD did not seem much easier than the questions on the exam. Others may have had a different experience, but that was mine. I did notice that I "memorized" the answers rather quickly, and am glad I saved the tests on the CD until after I had already worked through the book, and could still use them to help polish my knowledge.
27 of 29 found the following review helpful:
 Good book but not enoughDec 24, 2008
By Dennis Rongo
"The Menace"
I read this book from front-to-back and performed a lot of the exercises. For the most part, I've found errors in the answer keys within the end of chapter questionnaires and some of the coding examples given. While an error is acceptable to a certain degree, it is somehow unforgivable when it comes to studying for an exam since you need the absolute answer for everything. A book can potentially lose its credibility once a reader finds inconsistencies within its context. It's a battle but experience can play a big role in determining the best solution, even in the exam.
I may also add that the sample questions given in the book and CD are way easier than that of the real exam. It doesn't even compare. I passed it but I had to find some other way means of reading up some details/references that the book lacks. Reading this book is only half the battle. I honestly can say that this is a good starting point since it covers the basic and fundamentals of various subjects. Since the exam covers much more in-depth for each subjects, you'll find yourself looking somewhere else in addition to what you've learned from this book. I end up going to MSDN a lot just to look up a topic and find out more about it.
To sum it up, get this book as a starting point to get you on the right track then research the topics and learn the little details on your own.
22 of 23 found the following review helpful:
If you can find something better, more power to you.Jun 28, 2009
By Austin C#
"austinvb"
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft® .NET Framework Application Development Foundation, Second edition
I basically used this book as my only printed resourse for taking the Application Development Foundation (70-536) test. There are NO other alternative books that I know of.
This second edition of the book still has some errors in it. I attempted to read the first edition and found the number of erros appalling and distracting. I considered finding the errors on the second edition part of my training for the test. I also looked up topics that the book didn't cover on MSDN. The tests at the end of the chapters are in no way similar to the actual questions on the test but they still help in testing and consolidating your knowledge and undertanding of the topics.
As the time to take the test approached, I bought the pratice test from Transcender and found the questions it contained to be very similar to the questions on the actual test. I actually passed the test with a very high score. Getting a Transcender practice test actually gives you a better perspective of the types of questions you will encounter on the test and helps you fill in any gaps the book may have.
Good luck on the test.
12 of 13 found the following review helpful:
I Used This Book To Pass The 70-536 Exam.Dec 03, 2009
By Craig W. Kemple
I passed on my first try using this book as my main resource. This is how:
1) I read the "70-536 Training Kit" cover to cover. I worked all the labs. I answered all the sample questions. Any subject that I was not familiar with, e.g., COM interoperability, I got a book on that subject and read the first few chapters so I had a good background on the subject. (The MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit is not a primer! It does not baby step you through the basics of VB .NET or C#, nor any of the APIs.) Fortunately, I have a subscription to one of the several online technical book libraries. So, getting my hands on books was easy & cheap. I would recommend doing the same.
2) I re-read the book cover to cover. This time I only spent time studying the lab code that I previously completed. I worked the sample questions again.
3) The weekend prior to the exam, I reviewed all of the text I highlighted and again studied the lab code. (I know, I'm old fashioned. I actually bought a hard copy of this book and used a high lighter.)
I was taken by surprise at how focused the exam was on testing the minutia of the APIs. The MCTS Self -Paced Training Kit did a really good job of providing coverage of the significant APIs to know to pass the exam. I believe I could have done a lot better on the exam if I had spent more time rote memorizing the examples in the book. (Like punishment at school, write the code snippets 100 times each. A dry erase board would come in handy. But not required!)
The sample questions were easier than the real exam. So, I would highly recommend getting one of the practice tests listed on the Microsoft site, "MeasureUp" or "Self Test Software".
I don't know what the big deal about errata is. There were only a couple of times that I got annoyed. But, the online errata page resolved that.
Good luck!
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 UnsatisfactoryMay 21, 2010
By Einar Waaler Høst
I have several issues with this book.
First off, I resent the fact that it is "bi-lingual". As it is, a third of the book is useless to me (i.e. the VB.NET code samples) - a complete waste of dead trees and ink. It's not only superfluous, it is distracting, since I must continually scan for the C# code. Please bother to print two different editions of the book. It should be trivial.
Second, there is too much generic boilerplate text. Each chapter starts with the same kind of generic paragraphs stating that you should have some prior experience with .NET and Visual Studio blah blah blah. Again, I have to scan the text to see where the actual content starts.
Third, I would have liked to see some illustrations! Several topics (such as code access security) would benefit greatly from visual presentations to accompany or replace part of the text. As it is, I have to mentally deserialize the text to build up these images in my head instead.
Finally, a complaint about the exam itself (not the book) is that there are too many questions about random .NET arcana (such as the sequence of parameters to a method call, or whether you pass something to a constructor or set a property after constructing the object, or if there's is a factory method you should use rather than a constructor). A good test would focus on understanding, not on the stuff that Intellisense and MSDN gives you.
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