Born to Thrive

It was last week when I took the 70-564 exam and I passed with the score 985/1000. It looks like I got 1 question wrong. Nevertheless, I have earned Microsoft Certified Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Developer title.

Here is my experience with the exam:

• there is 50 (!) questions (70-503 (WCF) exam also has 50 questions but on the other hand 70-505 (Windows Forms 3.5) exam has only 40 questions) and 120 minutes
• questions are not harder than those for 70-562 exam, so if you can pass that exam, you can pass this one
• there is very few questions on Ajax - MCTS ASP.NET 3.5 exam (70-562) had about 10 questions on Ajax but this one maybe 3 or 4. Also I think 1 question was exactly the same as I had at 70-562 exam
• there is a lot of questions on state management, which is in line with the exam objectives (Manage state of controls and Design a state management strategy).
• main focus of questions is to test the ability to identify appropriate usage, so in oder words 70-562 exam requires a tester to know how to use something  whereas 70-564 exam requires to know when to use something or which one to use in this scenario. 
• the most crucial aspect at the exam is to read questions very carefully - most questions will contain a list of requirements that almost all answers will meet but there will, of course, only 1 answer (unless it is multiple choice question) that will meet every single requirement and every single word in all the requirements. 
• very often requirement(s) will contain a comma separated list ie.types of files or activities so make sure that answers will satisfy all elements from the list(s). 

I hope those guidelines will be helpful for everyone who considers taking the 70-564 exam, even though everyone could come to the same conclusions after studying the exam objectives. Given the fact that the exam doesn't cover anything more than 70-562 exam does, I would encourage everyone to take 70-564 exam if he or she has passed 70-562 exam with a good score. I waited a month to read a little more about designing enterprise applications using ASP.NET with the focus on requirements and proposed solutions that would meet those requirements. There is really no point to wait unless you were not comfortable with the 70-562 exam.
Next exam on path to MCPD Enterprise Application Developer 3.5 is MCTS 70-561 ADO.NET 3.5, which will be the last one before the final 70-565 exam.