I'm taking 70-549

DeepCode · May 2009

I'm taking the 70-549 exam tomorrow so I will post my review after the exam. What I've gathered at this point after reading the self paced pdf is that, this exam tests BREADTH in MS.NET development and not so much depth. The MCTS exams like 528 and 529 are the DEPTH-testing exams. Also, a greater portion of the "skills being tested" are things one would pick up during development on the job or from taking the other exams. Anyway I'll post a full review after the exam.

JDMurray · May 2009

Thanks, good luck, and I'm looking forward to reading your review.

DeepCode · May 2009

I passed the exam on Friday with a score of 820. I will do my best to review the exam and share my experiences, without violating Microsoft’s NDA

I started preparing for the exam by reading the self-paced test kit. The exercises at the end of the chapters were not as involved as the MCTS exercises so it took didn’t take that long (about a week) to finish this book. The initial chapters are very similar to what one will encounter in a software engineering class i.e Activity Diagrams, Collaboration Diagrams and Sequence Diagrams etc.

I quickly realized that the material being presented were concepts a developer will pick up on the job. Design concepts like when to use SqlDataReader and not a DataSet, which solution to use, what component type to pick, how to design application tiers, appropriate tiers in which to place specific components etc, were things one will typically know only if one had actually performed these tasks in real life albeit knowing about these concepts from reading various technical literature. After taking my first practice exam, I did not touch the self paced kit again for I found out how “useless “it was. So I read the test kit once and took one practice exam.

I think the overall knowledge acquired from taking the 3 prerequisite MCTS exams helped a lot. Also, prior experience was where most of MY answers came from and not from reading the silly self paced test kit. This was a very long test. There were 60 long archetypical MS cert questions, covering the “skills being measured” topics listed on the MS site for 70-549. I was tired and ready to go home after an hour. I took this on a Friday at 3pm and didn’t finish till 6pm. Then when I was done, the attendant at the test center couldn’t print my score sheet because according to her, there was “an Active X Error” when print was clicked.

If you have lots of development experience, broad developmental experience in .NET, you have passed the three MCTS exams (the hard way and the ****’s way with ****) and you are familiar with UML diagrams, you really don’t need to read the self paced kit. On about 10 of the questions, I was able to narrow down the options to two and at this point, I wished I had a “millionaire” life-line. Ordering the exams in increasing order of difficulty yields:
528 --> 526 --> 549 --> 536 --> 529

I am not sure whether I should upgrade immediately to .net 3.5 or wait for a while. Has anyone taken any of the .NET 3.5 exams? I don’t think the upgrade for Enterprise developer 3.5 exists yet. Anyway, thanks to all for the interesting and informative posts.

JDMurray · May 2009

DeepCode wrote: »

I am not sure whether I should upgrade immediately to .net 3.5 or wait for a while. Has anyone taken any of the .NET 3.5 exams? I don’t think the upgrade for Enterprise developer 3.5 exists yet. Anyway, thanks to all for the interesting and informative posts.

If you are getting these certs to improve your resume then you need to seriously consider any certs related to .NET 3.5. There are now a lot of hiring managers looking for people with 3.5 skills--especially ASP.NET 3.5. Having .NET 3.5 certs can put you ahead of other job candidates.

I'm taking 70-549

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