Reviews for MCAD / MCSD Training Guide: Exam 70-320: Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Visual C# .NET and the .NET Framework

1. Absolute rubbish

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2007

   FULL of typos! Half his examples don't work, which is infuriating at best. Especially when you've spent an hour laboriously typing out one single example, only to find nothing happens and it doesn't illustrate the point it's supposed to. It's even worse when he goes on to build further examples on the non-working example -- there's an entire chapter in this book in which almost none of the examples work!
   
   Some might argue this gives you an opportunity to learn as you figure out what the error is. But if you want to figure it all out unaided, why are you buying a text book?
   
   Even when they do work, his examples are very long, and take forever to type. This is a huge amount of time wasted, especially when there are texts out there that illustrate the exact same principles with much briefer examples.
   
   He's also fond of periodically setting you exercises to work through on your own, using principles he hasn't even mentioned yet. This is confusing, and it knocks your confidence to find yourself presented, again and again, with challenges about which you haven't even a clue of where to start!
   
   I think this could be an O.K. text if you already have considerable knowledge of C# (though I suspect there's probably better out there). If you are trying to learn C#, I would strongly recommend you find something else. Preferably something that's been proof-read! Your studies will be quicker and much less frustrating.

2. A great book

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, December 12rd, 2006

   But it is written for an old version of Visual Studio.NET if you have like myself Visual Studio 2005 you will find the exercises make little or no sense.

3. It looked so small in the picture online!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, June 12nd, 2006

   I purchased this book to help me study for the 70-315 exam and more importantly fill the many holes in my ASP.NET knowledge (which it certainly did). I divided up the chapters and read most of it in about 3 weeks. Keeping mainly to the text and about 50% of the StepByStep exercises. There's enough detail and extra exercises, review questions, exam questions and facts to help you absorb the detail no matter what your study method is. I took my 70-315 exam today and scored 791 (pass mark of 700). The book worked for me, and my once very basic knowledge of ASP.NET is now very much improved. I found this book very easy to get on with and will be ordering the others to complete my MCAD.

4. Superb exam preparation and subject coverage

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, May 12th, 2006

   This book takes some very complex areas of .net web development and describes them in a very easy to digest format. There are regular hands on lab exercises and follow on exam questions at the end of each chapter. I attained my MCAD very recently and feel that some of the credit for achieving this goal is partly attributed to the authours of this book.

5. This book got me through the exam!

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2006

   As others have said, a GREAT book (defo the best web-related technical book that I've used so far).

   I used a similar approach to Emma Burrows below (ie took a few weeks to go through the book from cover to cover, doing all the exercises in the chapters), then took a break for a while and tried to use what I'd learnt from the book in my every day work, and returned to it a couple of months later. I then re-read the whole book within a couple of weeks - re-reading the complete material again, but saving time by just reading through the code in the examples, and making sure I could see how things worked. I then did all the exam questions at the back of each chapter. Initially, I thought that some of the questions were a bit vague, and some could have had more than 1 answer, but the good thing about this is that it made me more cautious about how the final exam could catch me out. These end-of-chapter exam questions were also really good and ensuring that I picked up important exam information that I would have otherwise missed if I didn't do them.

   I then did the complete exam at the back of the book, and only an hour later I did the exam on the included CD (scoring an average of about 88% between both types of exams).

   I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed with the CD, as at least 2 of the questions had been incorrectly entered (eg I chose option A, but then somehow the test told me that I'd chosen B, which was wrong). I also found a couple of questions that, in the real world, would have been wrong or too vague for the user to be able to make the right decision. However, this is not the fault of the book, but the vendor of the CD.

   Anyway, the next day I took my exam. Initially, I was a bit alarmed to find some material in the exam that was not covered at all in the book, but I still managed to pass with a mark of 867 (quite consistent with the results I got from the book and CD exams, don't you think?), so all was well in the end, and I've passed this exam. :)

   Speaking to a few friends that know a fair bit about these exams, they all said that they'd heard the exams have become more difficult as of late, so I guess this is why some of the material was not covered in the book.

   This is why the book gets "only" 4 stars from me, otherwise it would get the full 5. But overall, I'd say that this book is a MUST if you're doing this exam. Just that you might want to look into database and ADO.NET stuff a bit more (in particular, SQL Server) - very naughty of MS here, as that's a different MCAD exam topic! ;)