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.

More...

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.

Few days I wrote a review about uCertify product for Exam 070-553 C#. And today, I received an e-mail from uCertify, here is an excerpt from that e-mail:

"We are offering a discount to the readers of your Blog. (If there is certain suggestion in review) Your suggestions will definitaly help us to improve our products and ultimately benefit our users. Your readers can use our discount code given on your Blog and get 10% discount on the uCertify PrepKit of their choice"

So you can apply this Discount code "MMMOSA" and gain 10% discount on the uCertify PrepKit of your choice as mentioned above.

So 10% discount and money back guarantee if you didn't pass from the 1st attempt! Check uCertify.com for more details about money back guarantee.

Introduction:

I almost attended & passed more than 10 Microsoft Certification Exams. With the assist of self-learning paced training as well as official Microsoft Learning products. And before taking the exam, I used to practice the exam using some of the available exam simulators as well as assessments provided by Microsoft. And sometimes I just took the exam using my person experience.

And today uCertify gave me the chance to review one of their best exam simulation tools & preparation kits produced and provided by uCertify for exam 070-553: UPGRADE, MCSD.NET Skills to MCPD Enterprise Developer using C#.

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.

My Story:

I have a simple challenging story with exam 070-553 which I’m going to review its preparation software provided by uCertify. I passed this exam on 2006. I didn’t prepare for it. I was moving beside an exam center then I decided to take the exam. And I took it on the same day. Challenging my knowledge and experience, I hardly passed this exam with score 700.

Today and after 2 years, I found this exam preparation and test simulation software from uCertify, I wonder what would be my life and how would be my score if such product were available at that time. I would simply use my knowledge with assist of this product and pass the exam, gaining much more score I’m sure.