E-143 Veritas 70-316

CSCI  E-143       Programming in C# with Visual Studio .NET       Fall 2004

Certification Test Preparation Section

These meetings are optional and will be run by a TA.
Meetings will be held in the basement of  53 Church St.  at 2 p.m.  on Saturday afternoons.

The Certification Test
Primary Reference Text
CertPrep Schedule
Information on Certification Exams
Reference URLs and Books
Test Sites
Practice Exams

Further Info ("Prospectus and Warning") about E-143 CertPrep
E-143 Home Page

The Certification Test

The test we are preparing for is

Exam 70-316:   Developing and Implementing Windows®-Based Applications
with Microsoft®  Visual C#™.NET  and  Microsoft®  Visual Studio®.NET

Distinguish this test from tests such as

    Exam 70-315   (ASP.NET—web programming using C#)
    Exam 70-320   (.NET Services using C#)
    Exam 70-306   (Windows applications using Visual Basic .NET)  

Test 70-316 is described here.

Primary Reference Text

Amit Kalani:
MCAD / MCSD Training Guide:   Developing and Implementing Windows®-Based Applications
with Microsoft®  Visual C#™.NET  and  Microsoft®  Visual Studio®.NET,   Exam 70-316.
© 2003 Que Publishing.     ISBN 0-7897-2823-0.     (Reprinted with Corrections, August 2003)

The price at Amazon is about $35.   This printing is marked "Reprinted with corrections", but the earlier printing seemed to have few errors, and would be OK.   The page numbers are the same.    Publisher's errata for this text

This book is the one we will always refer to in this section as "Kalani".   The purpose of this section is to read this text.   All of it.   1036 pages.   This text and its use in this class are extensively discussed here.

CertPrep Schedule

This material is so different from that covered in the Thursday classes that the two schedules cannot be synchronized.


Date Topic Readings Caveats
Sept. 25 Prospectus and Warning (Kalani, Chapter 1)  
Oct. 2 Testing and Debugging Kalani, Chapter 12   (60 pages) Notes
Oct. 9 Introducing Windows Forms (+ Graphics) Kalani, Chapter 1   (92 pages) Notes
Oct. 16 Windows Controls Kalani, Chapter 2   (116 pages) Notes
Oct. 23 Error Handling
Components and Assemblies		 Kalani, Chapter 3   (54 pages)
Kalani, Chapter 4   (70 pages)		 Notes
Notes
Oct. 30 Data Binding
Introduction to Reading Database Tables		 Kalani, Chapter 5   (74 pages) Notes
Code for reading database tables                     Downloadable code samples
Nov. 6 Consuming and Manipulating Data
(excluding flat files and XML)		 Kalani, Chapter 6   (138 pages, –) Notes 1
Nov. 13 Consuming and Manipulating Data   (complete,
plus a lot of additional material in class) 		Kalani, Chapter 6 Notes 2
Nov. 20 Globalization
Working with Legacy Code		 Kalani, Chapter 8   (42 pages)
Kalani, Chapter 9   (36 pages)		 Notes
Notes
Nov. 27 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY — NO CLASS    
Dec. 4 Configuring an Application (+ Security) Kalani, Chapter 15   (48 pages) Notes
Dec. 11 Deploying an Application Kalani, Chapter 13   (106 pages) Notes
Dec. 18 Web Services
Maintaining an Application		 Kalani, Chapter   7   (34 pages)
Kalani, Chapter 14   (50 pages)		 Notes
Notes
Dec. 25
Jan. 1		 CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY — NO CLASSES    
Jan. 8 User Help and Accessibility
Printing		 Kalani, Chapter 10   (52 pages)
Kalani, Chapter 11   (46 pages)		 Notes
Notes
Jan. 15 Odds and ends   (Final meeting of the CertPrep section) Notes
Jan. 22 E-143 Final project demos.   (No CertPrep.)
Notice of any grade on the certification exam must be received by Paul Holley on or before this day.

Information on Certification Exams

Microsoft  (General information on certifications and exams)

General info
Certifications page
Basic MCP exam
Exam 70-316

There are at least eight certification exams relevant to this course:

70-315: ASP  (Web applications)  / C# .NET
70-316: Windows applications / C# .NET   (This is the one we cover.)
70-320: Services / C# .NET
 
70-300: .NET Architectures
 
70-229: SQL Server
70-230: BizTalk
70-234: Commerce Server
70-340: Security / C# .NET   (Added June 2004)

There are three levels of certification involving exam 70-316:
MCP Microsoft Certified Professional Pass one exam from the first group—
70-315, 70-316, or 70-320.
MCAD Microsoft Certified Application Developer Pass all three exams in the first group.
MCSD Microsoft Certified Solution Developer Pass all three exams in the first group,
plus the one exam in the second group (70-300),
plus one exam from the third group.

You only have to pass each test once, for you use each test you pass to satisfy the requirements of the next level.   The certification levels are cumulative—you pass one test to become an MCP,  then you pass two more tests to become an MCAD,  and then you pass two more tests to become an MCSD.   Thus you need to pass five different exams for the MCSD.

The above list is only one way of attaining the three certification levels.   For instance,  all of the exams listed above as using "C# .NET" also exist in Visual Basic versions.   You may take exams that use VB instead of C#—instead of exam 70-315 (ASP/C#),  you could take 70-305 (ASP/VB).   But you can't count both a C# and a VB exam on the same subject toward the MCAD—you can't count both 70-305 and 70-315.   For the various options for choosing among these and other exams to satisfy the MCP,  MCAD,  and MCSD requirements,  see the URLs in the following table and the Microsoft sites listed above.   And be sure to read the fine print in the certification test requirements on the Microsoft pages.

Reference URLs and Books

Level Exams Reference URLs and Books
MCP 70-316:  Windows / C# http://www.microsoft.com/traincert/mcp/mcp/requirements.asp 

MCAD/MCSD Training Guide (Exam 70-316):  Developing and Implementing Windows-based Applications with Visual C# and Visual Studio.NET.   Amit Kalani.   Reprinted with corrections, Aug. 2003.   Que Publishing.   (This is the principal text for E-143 CertPrep.   It is the book we call  "Kalani"—or sometimes  "long Kalani"  to distinguish it from the book listed next.   This text is discussed here.)

MCAD Developing and Implementing Windows-based Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET—Exam Cram 2 (Exam Cram 70-316).   Kalani Kirk Hausman,  Amit Kalani,  Priti Kalani,  Ed Tittel.   Pearson Education.   (This is the book we call  "short Kalani".   It is a shorter version of the first book listed, but its lack of code makes it less useful for our purposes.   But we do go over its sample test questions.   See If you miss a Saturday.)

MCAD/MCSD:  Developing Windows-Based Applications, Exam 70-306 [VB] & 70-316.   Matt Stoecker.   2nd Edition.   Microsoft Press.   (Useful for CertPrep only as a supplement.   May be useful to beginners in C#/.NET coming from a VB background.)

  •  other books referred to in these web pages are listed  here.

MCAD 70-315:  ASP.NET / C# http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcad/default.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcad/requirements.asp
http://www.vue.com/ms/mcad/mcadtrack.pdf

MCAD/MCSD Training Guide (Exam 70-315):  Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Visual C# and Visual Studio.NET.   Amit Kalani.   Que Publishing.

MCAD/MCSD:  Developing Web Applications, Exam 70-305 [VB] and 70-315.   Jeff Webb.   Microsoft Press (2nd Edition)

70-320:  Services / C# MCAD/MCSD Training Guide (Exam 70-320):   Developing XML Services and Server Components with Visual C# .NET and the .NET Framework.   Amit Kalani.   Que Publishing.   (This book is not used for E-143, but is highly recommended by Mr. Holley.)

MCAD/MCSD Self-Paced Training Kit: Developing XML Web Services and Server Conponents with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C# .NET, Exams 70-310 and 70-320.   Microsoft Press.

MCSD 70-300: .NET Architectures

 Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures, MCSD Exam 70-300.   Microsoft Press.   (Another book not used for E-143 but highly recommended by Mr. Holley.)
70-229: SQL Server
70-230: BizTalk
70-234: Commerce Server
70-340: Security / C#		 http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcsd/requirementsdotnet.asp

Test Sites

Both of these companies administer the test at several locations in the Boston area.

Pearson VUE   (Test administrator)
General info and registration
Exam (2003) took 2½ hours.
Cost (2003): $125.

Warning:   Before scheduling an exam, be sure to talk to someone at the test site on the phone to confirm the site's hours. The on-line registration pages might cheerfully schedule your test for a time when the test site has closed for the night.

Prometric   (Test administrator)
General info and registration
Cost (2003): $125.

Practice Exams

The following URLs for practice exams are for information only.
We're not asking you to use these practice tests, and we will not use them in the section.

Transcender     (Despite its cost, this seems to be the most popular sample test.)
General info
Exam 70-316 package              Cost: $249.   (Includes video.)
Exam 70-316 questions only     Cost: $139 for 10MB download; $149 for CD.

Kaplan
General info
Exam 70-316      Cost: $99.

MeasureUp
General info
Exam 70-316      Cost: $59 for 30-day use;  $89 for download or CD.   There's a (ten-question?) demo.

Last revised Dec. 5, 2004