Born to Thrive

As always before studying for the exam, I usually look for some tips from those who have taken the exam. As always I googled it, but this time I couldn’t find much information. The exam is not very popular plus there is no self-paced training kit book so there are no book reviews whether the book is sufficient for the exam or what parts are missing, which usually gives me a hint what to expect on the exam. Here are the few web sites I found that describe the exam:

• how-to-prepare-70-565-net35
• exam-70-565-prep-guide
• 70-565-passed
• how-to-pass-70-565-mcpd-enterprise-application-developer

Unfortunately, only the last two links points to sites with some information beyond what you can find on the Microsoft exam summary. As always people mention that if you have experience with designing and developing enterprise applications, you should be fine. Based on my own experience from the 70-547 exam (MCPD ASP.NET 2.0 - if to compare skills measured by 70-547 and 70-565 exams, they are pretty close with obvious difference that 70-565 is Web + Windows Forms in .NET 3.5 and 70-547 was only web development in .NET 2.0) I remember that vast majority questions didn’t require very technical knowledge like properties or methods in some classes. Most questions were as stated by exam summary about UML diagrams, testing, deployment, and some development questions – mostly designing api. And it looks like the 70-565 exam is the same but in regards to enterprise applications. Last link points to a web site with the most useful information about the exam and it is: UML diagrams, testing strategies, distributed applications / WCF and deployment. So because I work as enterprise developer, I think my learning strategy will be to read about all exam aspects with the special focus on the aforementioned topics. Here are the books and guides I’m more likely to use for that:

• Learning UML 2.0
• Learning WCF
• Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB
• Pro .NET 2.0 Windows Forms and Custom Controls in C#
• Distributed Application Developer Self-Paced Training Kit 70-529 (I took that exam)
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
• The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .Net
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
• Microsoft Application Architecture Guide 2.0
• Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
• Microsoft Integration Pattern
• Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability
• Enterprise Solution Patterns using Microsoft.Net
• Deploying .NET Framework-Based Applications
• Improving Web Services Security: Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF

Fortunately for me, I have already read all the above books and guides so it will be rather skimming than reading but definitely with making sure that I understand the topics. There is a lot of information so there are a lot of things you can blog about. I will probably focus on testing, WCF and analysis of design of the application. I might write a post about some concepts of distributed applications in .NET like Enterprise Services or WSE 3.0, but with focus on when to use them or if they can be replaced with WCF. I will make sure that the topic will be useful and helpful both for the exam and for the daily development as an Enterprise Application Developer.