Born to Thrive

After having passed 70-562 exam, I had only 2 more exams to take in order to become Microsoft Certified Professional Enterprise Application Developer. However, when I looked at the syllabus of 70-564 exam and read more about that exam, I decided to take 70-564 exam, which is Pro: Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications Using the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. Passing it would complete all requirements to be recognized as Microsoft Certified Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Developer.
I started from readying the exam syllabus and then I compared it with exams 70-547 (MCPD ASP.NET 2.0), 70-562 (MCTS ASP.NET 3.5) and 70-565 (MCPD Enterprise Applications 3.5). And it seems that 70-564 exam is like 70-562 exam, where previous MCPD ASP.NET exam covered a lot more (technical envisioning and planning, stabilizing and releasing, evaluation of database designing, etc.). Now those objectives are covered by 70-565 exam, which makes exam 70-564 almost identical to 70-562.
Second thing I always to do before starting studying to an exam is reading other people's blogs and forums to learn their experience and look for some tips. Here are the links to some of the web sites I found with information on the exam:
http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/examinfo/default.aspx?id=11897
http://www.zoroja.com/blog/2009/10/11/how-to-study-for-the-ms-70-564-exam/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/751051/how-to-study-for-microsoft-exam-70-564-asp-net-3-5
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/963998/studying-for-the-70-564-exam
http://blog.campbellgunn.com/2009/06/passed-exam-70-564-today/
http://www.ms-faqs.com/content/12/47/en/what-books-should-i-study-to-pass-exam-70_564.html
http://www.jumpadvance.com/resources
http://omgili.com/jmp/
That helped me established the following facts about the exam:
- The content is almost identical to 70-562 so if you can pass 70-562, you can pass 70-564
- The exam is very 3.5 centric, which means that extra time should be spent of things like WCF, Ajax, LINQ, ListView, DataPager, aspnet_merge, etc.
- There is no study book for the exam and the book for the previous exam (70-547) is only a waste of time. Generally, it seems that about four to five books are needed to cover the exam's material - a book for AJAX, LINQ or ADO.NET 3.5 that includes LINQ, ASP.NET custom control, designing including Master pages and a security book.
- You just needed to read the questions very carefully - I'm guessing that there might be more than 1 answer (maybe even all) that would solve the problem but the task is to find the one that meets all requirements or is the most efficient or is the easiest to implement or is simply the best practice.
I especially liked the idea that if you can pass 70-562, you can pass 70-564 exam. That was one of the reasons that I decided to start studying to this exam plus the fact that I have a voucher valid till December, 31st 2009 with 30% off on the exam. And of course the fact that I passed 70-562 a few days ago, so it seems I don't have to learn much for this exam.
The books I'm going to use are as follows:
Professional ASP.NET 3.5
Introducing Ajax
Professional Linq
ASP.NET 2.0 -Advanced Topics
ASP.NET 2.0 - Core Reference
ADO.NET 2.0 - Core Reference
Programming WCF
Learning WCF - Hands-on Guide
ASP.NET 3.5 Enterprise Application Development with Visual Studio 2008: Problem Design Solution
Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.Net 3.5
Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Design: CSS, Themes, and Master Pages
Pro ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005
There is a lot of books and some of them contain information on ASP.NET 2.0 but they still contain a lot of very useful information and there is no 3.5 equivalent. And due to the fact that I have already read those books, they will be used mostly as a reference to read through examples with main focus how the proposed solutions have met the original requirements, which should help with choosing the best answer during the exam - but most of all during real life project when a developer is responsible for gathering requirements and proposing the best solution, which is probably one of the most crucial elements during SDLC, that has a huge impact on the overall success of a project. And I guess that's why this exam's syllabus is not to measure more knowledge but to measure skills to follow requirements and to know how to utilize the knowledge you have acquired. And those are the skills that every thriving developer should possess.