Brian On Software

Some readers were asking me about the status of my self-imposed challenge to achieve the MCPD-EAD (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer: Enterprise Application Developer) certification before the end of the year.  Well, it turns out that I’ve completed and passed the last exam of the series this morning.  When I first started out with this insane challenge of doing one certification every three to four weeks, I had no idea of the amount of time I would have to dedicate to complete it in the initial timeframe.  So just to recap, I passed 70-536 (Fundamentals) back in June, 70-529 (Distributed Applications) in July, 70-528 (Web Applications) in August, 70-526 (Windows Applications) in September and 70-549 (Design and Development) this morning (October).  All of these exams focus on various technologies targeting .NET 2.0.

For each of these exams, I have used the “self-paced” book series (the same series used for 70-536 and 70-529), which are:

• MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-528): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Web-Based Client Development
• MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-526): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Windows-Based Client Development
• MCPD Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-549): Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications Using the Microsoft .NET Framework

Now, I’m going to say it straight and simple: all of these books suck.  The only good thing about them is that the authors have done a pretty good job copy/pasting the right MSDN documentation so that we wouldn’t waste our time doing it ourselves.  The major drawbacks I have against these books are the really poor coding style of the authors towards their examples.  A big portion of the examples contain errors, are sometimes misleading and some of them clearly won’t compile if you copy/paste the code in Visual Studio.   It’s sad to see so many mistakes like these, especially when each book is written by so many authors, because the credibility of these individuals take a pretty bad hit in the public’s eye.  I’m sure they were pushed by the deadline, but I wished they’ve polished the examples a little bit more.  I know…I know…Nobody’s perfect…I know.  But that’s still no reason to deliver mediocre products.

All right.  So just in case you’re thinking (or already started) to get your MCPD-EAD credentials, I am going to tell you how I’ve managed my time to pass each of these exams in hope that it might help you to pass them successfully.  In average, I dedicated about 40 hours per exam:

• 15 hours to read the book (1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening should be enough for you to read the whole book within a week.  You don’t have to read EVERYTHING.  If you’re proficient in C#, then skip all the VB.NET examples.  Same idea goes if you’re more proficient in VB.NET than C#.   Whenever the authors mentions something in a box with the title “Real-World Scenario” you SKIP it.  It doesn’t matter.  The “real-world scenario” isn’t in the book…it’s in the REAL WORLD.  Don’t waste your time.  Also, don’t do all of the activities at the end of each chapter.  Just get through the book because you don’t want to waste too much of your time.  Here we’re really trying to cram our brain with tons of information.  The exams are roughly 80% based on memorization of the content and 20% on actual thinking.  Feel free to write notes and underline important ideas as you read along.  I used to write “EXAM” in red ink on the margin so that I can review it at a later time.)
• 20 hours to practice with Transcender or MeasureUp exams.  I have only used Transcenders, so I can’t say much about MeasureUp.  I’ve heard they’re quite good too.  Whichever you decide to do, I strongly suggest you to do all of the questions more than once.  Then when you’re confident enough about the material, take a moment to answer the questions in the “certification” mode to give you a better feel for the exam.  By the way, none of the questions of either Transcenders or MeasureUp were in the exams I’ve taken.  To be honest, the mock exams’ goals are to deepen your knowledge with the various technologies.  That’s it, that’s all.  Don’t put too much confidence in them, because what I’ve concluded at the end of each real exam is that the mock exams only helped me about 20% on the “knowledge” stuff and 80% on the actual “feeling” for the exam.  Take a week or two to practice these.
• 5 hours to practice some things I didn’t fully understand (proper use of some class, understanding the use behind some interfaces, getting comfortable with the security model, etc.) inside Visual Studio.  I strongly suggest you use Reflector to assist you in quickly discovering the information behind some objects in the framework.

I also suggest you to book your exam in advance.  For example, suppose you start studying for an exam today, then you will book an exam date four weeks from now.  This should motivate you to stay on course and respect your schedule.  And if that’s not enough, then mention to your boss and your fellow co-workers that you intend to pass this exam by that date.  Feel free to also share you exam date as a comment on this post! That should put enough pressure to get the job done…wouldn’t it?

In closing, I found that the 70-526 (Windows Applications) exam was the easiest exam of the bunch.  As for the hardest, I must say that it was the 70-529 (Distributed Applications) exam, mostly because I’ve never done .NET Remoting in the past.  And now that WCF is in the neighborhood, I doubt I’ll even have to touch .NET Remoting in the future!  It all depends on your experience with these technologies.  The more you practice and learn, the greater your chance in passing.

Three weeks after passing TS 70-536, I sat down again for another two hours at our Prometric test center in order to pass yet another exam that leads towards the MCPD-EA designation.  As a matter of fact, I passed TS 70-529 this morning.  So far, all the TS exams I passed make my thermodynamic and chemistry exams look like a joke.  This exam wasn’t as hard as the 70-536, but the level of difficulty was still pretty high in my opinion.  For this exam, my employer  was once again kind enough to provide me a training book which was of a great help, but also of a great headache.  The book was the MCTS 70-529 Self-Paced Training Kit.  It was of great help because the content is basically a good collection of MSDN documentation categorized by exam objectives and sub-objectives.  As for the “headache” part, well, the book is filled with ugly C# code (some have compilation-error, others have their style so messed up that it’s hard to follow what the code is suppose to do) and mistakes that can lead you to error if you don’t search for the answer yourself on MSDN or elsewhere on the Web.  The funny thing is that the ugliness of the code and most of the mistakes applied only for the C# examples, as I assume most of the authors were more proficient in VB.NET instead.  Hey, nobody’s perfect.  So, two down and three to go.  My objective is to hopefully earn MCPD-EA before September 2008, as I’ll be starting my Master’s at that time.  So, in short, that means taking one exam every three weeks (Lord, help me!).  Next one on the list: 70-528.

This morning I passed the first exam (70-536) towards MCPD-EA which is the foundation exam that most of the other Visual Studio exams are built on.  If you’re considering taking on this exam, I strongly suggest you to get a copy of the MCTS Self Paced Training Kit Exam focused on 70-536.  Make sure you get the version that was printed in 2006, because I heard there were many errors (over 40 pages of them) in the previous release.

I started studying for this exam on May 22th and my strategy was to complete reading the book cover-to-cover in two weeks and then reserve an extra week and a half to practice concepts I didn’t fully understand simply by reading the material.  My daily intake of cramming was about two hours on weekdays (woke up at 6AM every weekday and study/practice until 8AM before going to work) and four hours on the weekend.  Just make sure you create your own study plan and see what fits best for you.  Your best friend when studying for this type of exams is .NET Reflector; if it wasn’t for this tool, I think it would’ve taken me longer to understand how some less familiar classes work in the framework.  Also, make sure you do (and re-do) all the practice questions and mock exams provided in the CD that comes with the book because even though it might not reflect entirely the real exam, you’ll sure learn more than a handful of tricks you can do with the framework.

As for the real exam, it was almost nothing compared to the review questions and the practice questions/exams provided with the book.  As a matter of fact, you’ll be thrown tons of questions that might get one of your eyebrows up on a side, unless you took some time to apply your knowledge on hands-on exercises.  I recommend you go crazy with your imagination and create your own set of exercises for at least a week (make it fun!).  That being said, I suggest you to go wacko with concepts attached to security (code access and role-based security), cultures and globalization (I had so many questions related to these), serialization, invoking processes, threads and interoperability between managed and unmanaged code (COM, PInvoke, etc.).

If possible, I recommend you studying with a friend or in groups to leverage common knowledge and understanding on some concepts which might be hard to grasp alone.  Also, have fun studying for it…remember that you don’t need to understand EVERYTHING in the framework…just enough to pass the exam with 70%.

Best of luck!

[UPDATE]

• There’s an interview with three candidates for 70-536 that was recorded at TechEd 2008.

At Avanade, as in many consulting firms, we encourage developers in getting their Microsoft certifications.  Being passionate about technology, a lot of developers agree to reserve some time of studying and preparing for such certifications.  But how do you actually prepare for a brand new Microsoft beta exam when the resources and materials for a new exam are scarce due to the novelty of the technology?

A fellow co-worker at Avanade, Wayne Anderson, recently wrote a very detailed “map” on how to prepare to study for the new vague of Microsoft certifications targeting mostly the .NET Framework 3.5.  Interested?

Click here to read more on “Maximizing Microsoft Beta Opportunities“.

Here’s an interesting stat if you’re already an MCP or looking forward to achieve a couple of Microsoft certifications: Number of Microsoft Certified Professionals Worldwide.  It seems to be updated on a fairly regular basis.