Introduction

Before taking any exam, we usually start to prepare for that exam. Using official learning material like Microsoft learning products, reading blogs and articles or using exam preparation tool. And maybe all of that. The easiest way is to go through an exam preparation and simulation tool.

But that about a tool that gives you a preparation guide to help you learn, practice and track your results. This is pretty much what uCertify exam preparation products would give you.

And here I’m going to give you an overview and a review about uCertify M70-668: Pro Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Administrator

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About the book

Title: Programming Entity Framework 2^nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
URL: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596807252
Book website: http://learnentityframework.com/
ISBN: 978-0-596-80726-9
Chapters: 27 + 3 Appendices | ~900 pages
Author: Julia Lerman
Author’s blog: http://thedatafarm.com/blog/
Overall rating: 9.70 out of 10
This is the second edition of the book totally revised for Entity Framework 4.0 on VS2010 1^st edition was released Jan 2009. this 2^nd new edition released August 2010.

Personal Opinion

I can’t do anything but strongly recommend this book. It is almost everything you might need about Entity Framework 4.0. Great walkthroughs and samples in C#. However there are few snippet in VB.Net that shows different syntax of doing things between C# & VB.Net.

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About the book

Title: Microsoft Entity Framework in Action
Publisher: Manning Publications
Url: http://www.manning.com/mostarda/
ISBN: 9781935182184
Chapters: 19 + 2 Appendices | ~500 pages
Authors: Stefano Mostarda, Marco De Sanctis, Daniele Bochicchio
Overall rating: 9.24 out of 10

This book was in Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) while writing this review. I reviewed a draft released on 12^th August 2010. This is a detailed review where I rate each chapter and describe it’s contents. The overall rating mentioned above is the average of all chapters’ ratings.

Personal Opinion

I highly recommend this book. No further knowledge about Entity Framework is required. So you don’t have to know anything about EF1 in order to read and gain benefit of this book. Great effort spent on this book by the authors and the publisher. You’ll get a great value with reasonable amount of money compared to the information provided in this book.

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I thought to bring your attention about uCertify’s Spring Sale. Currently, uCertify is celebrating and welcoming spring with a Spring Sale. uCertify is offering a 20% discount on all Prepkits. A user can select from extensive selection of over 200 PrepKits to help prepare for their IT certification exam(s).

Duration of Sale: Monday, April 8, 2010 and ends on April 20, 2010.

To avail sale price: Type SPRING as the discount code during checkout

Full details of the sale can be found at: http://www.ucertify.com/blog/celebrate-your-spring-with-ucertifys-spring-sale.html

About uCertify

Founded in 1996, uCertify is a leading provider of exam preparation solutions for IT certifications from leading vendors such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Sun Java, Oracle, CIW, Adobe and Cisco. They are committed to help their clients to pass their certification exams by providing the highest quality preparation software. uCertify has devoted much of its resources in Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) research. Through continuous research and development, our products are designed and updated to cater to the needs of changing technology. uCertify PrepKits replicate the actual online exams, and help you experience the real exam environment. This gives you the confidence to pass your certification exams in the first attempt.

uCertify is committed to serving its customers with innovative, reliable, and high-quality products through continuous research and development, keeping in mind the trends and changes for each certification exam. As you know that uCertify also backs its entire range of PrepKits with a 100% pass guarantee. In the unlikely event, if a user do not pass your exam in the first attempt, uCertify refunds the entire amount - no questions asked! It's the best guarantee in the business!

You might noticed that I just passed the “UPGRADE: Transition your MCPD Enterprise Application Developer Skills to MCPD Part 1” exam last week. And I thought to take the 2nd part of the upgrade exam one on the same week.

Exam 70-569 “UPGRADE: Transition your MCPD Enterprise Application Developer Skills to MCPD Part 2”

Again thank God I passed the second part which is exam 70-569 last Wednesday 31st March 2010. You are eligible to take this exam if you are “MCPD Enterprise Application Development” for .Net 2.0. Achieving this exam gives the following Credential:

• MCTS .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Communication Foundation Applications.
• MCPD: Enterprise Application Developer 3.5

To gain the MCPD Enterprise Application Developer 3.5 certification you’ll need to complete part 1 too.

It worth to mention that this exam covers for the following exams:

• Exam 70-503 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 - Windows Communication Foundation.
• Exam 70-565 PRO: Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications Using the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

The exam was more than 45 question. I got score 925 for WCF and 1000 for Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications.

In general, both exams were easy ones, maybe because I’ve been working for couple of years now using .Net 3.5 beside 8+ on .Net framework on general. I started this certificate things since the release of .Net, and it was a good experience that I’m gaining benefit of now. Good luck to everyone.

IMPORTANT
IF YOU ARE HERE LOOKING FOR BRAIN DUMBS OR TEST KING COPY OF THIS EXAM THEN THIS IS THE WRONG PLACE.

I’ve been preparing for upgrading my MCPD certification from .Net 2.0 to .Net 3.5! And the upgrade exams released March 2009. And so I took my action these days and started to schedule and take the 2 upgrade exams.

It worth to mention that if you are an MCPD Enterprise Application Development, then it’s better for your to do the upgrade exams. This is much cheaper. The 2 upgrade exams equals to 6 one by one exams. You’re not only going to save your money, but also will save your time. Unless of course you already gained the credentials if you passed the beta exams.

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Information about the book:

Book Title: ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design
Book's Page: http://www.packtpub.com/application-architecture-and-design-for-asp-.net-3.5/book
Book Cover

Chapters: 9
Publisher: PACKT Publishing
Author: Vivek Thakur

Introduction:

Microsoft ASP.NET has quickly evolved to become one of the most famous platforms for developing web-based solutions. Since its first release with .Net 1.0, Microsoft has continuously added many out-of-the-box features and components, making web development easier for the end developer. As ASP.NET is part of the whole .Net Framework, it is gaining benefits of all features and technologies provided by the .Net Framework itself. With the introduction of LINQ, MS AJAX, WCF, WPF, and a lot of exciting new tools, the .NET framework has not only grown large but also flexible, in terms of the choices and options being offered to the developers.

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Information About the book:

Book Title: Entity Framework Tutorial
Book's Page: http://www.packtpub.com/entity-framework-tutorial/book
Book Cover:

Chapters: 8
Type: Tutorial
Publisher: PACKT Publishing
Author: Joydip Kanjilal

Introduction:

Since the release of .Net 3.5 SP1 & VS.NET 2008 SP1 which include Entity Framework v1 I started to play with EF and discover its usage and differences between it and LINQ to SQL.

Last month I got a change to have a book that walks through Entity Framework by tutorial. This book was Entity Framework Tutorial. The books itself is very small. It has a clear focus and scope; to put you on the road on how to build & use Entity Model of Entity Framework following comprehensive tutorials.

About Entity Framework Tutorial Book:

The book is small one, 228 pages on 8 Chapters. This books is targeting beginners who never used or even heard of Entity Framework. But of course the reader should be experienced developer with Microsoft .Net (general), ADO.NET & C#.

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Before I start on this, I am sure I am not going to full fill all what I want to express about NDepend. NDepend takes your to the deep dark corners of your code and lights up those bright corners in it. Thanks to Patrick Smacchia and all this product development team for such great tool.

What is NDepend?

I don't think I can explain better than what is written in its web site:

"NDepend is a tool that simplifies managing a complex .NET code base. Architects and developers can analyze code structure, specify design rules, plan massive refactoring, do effective code reviews and master evolution by comparing different versions of the code.
The result is better communication, improved quality, easier maintenance and faster development."

So it is a massive code analysis tool, analyse every aspect of your code and produces informative reports with detailed matrices, diagrams and charts that should help you improve your code.

NDepend also generate and HTML report with all code analysis made alone with matrices and attached diagrams, figures and charts. One good thing I loved about this report, is when I found a term that I don't understand there is a link that takes me directly to online help where this term is defined. This helped me a lot, because some terms I am not familiar with, maybe my English or I am bad Engineer :o), either reason, it helped me and sure would improve any of those 2 defects in me :o).

Not only NDepend gives you these reports about your analysed code, but also it allows your edit constraints on and queries that produce these reports.

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Few days I decided to take exam 70-504 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Windows Workflow Foundation Application Development so I decided to register the exam for today. And today I attended to the exam and passed with score 800. I worth to mention that I used a promotion code submitted to my by Microsoft because I registered on Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Learning Portal to be the first to know and save 40 percent on select Visual Studio 2008 exams.

I prepared for exam during the last month (June). I basically studied the from Microsoft Learning products, course Course 6462: Visual Studio 2008: Windows Workflow Foundation and Clinic 6262: Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008. And really, about 45% to 50% and maybe more of the exam question are totally covered by Course 6462 

The exam consist of 53 questions. You'll not find any exam simulator for this exam now, so if you wish to prepare for it just attend Course 6462 and use some external resources such Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Step by Step book.

Below is my score card for this exam.