MS certification path

I had mostly made up my mind yesterday to take the ASP.NET 2.0 test, 70-528, next. I have the book for that one, and the one after that, 70-547, both bought used (and cheap) from Amazon.
However, I just got exam vouchers for 50% off (and a free second take) that are only good for the tests on the VS 2008 / ASP.NET 3.5 track: 70-562 and 70-564. So, I’ve decided that the VS 2008 path is the better way to go. (And as added incentive, the vouchers expire on June 30, so I need to stick with a pretty good pace and get through them by then.) I went out to Borders this morning and bought the 70-562 book, so I can get started with it in earnest on Monday.
The 70-564 exam is going to present a challenge though. If you look at the “preparation materials” tab on the web page for this exam, you see the following:

Classroom Training
There is no classroom training currently available.
Microsoft E-Learning
There is no Microsoft E-Learning training currently available.
Microsoft Press Books
There are no Microsoft Press books currently available.

Hmm, this could be a problem. I do have the book for the VS 2005 equivalent to this exam, so I could start with that, and supplement it with various stuff off MSDN and from other ASP.NET 3.5 books, but it won’t be as straightforward as having an official exam study guide.

passed 70-536

I passed 70-536 today! This was my first Microsoft exam, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.
The questions on the exam weren’t much different from the questions on the practice exam included with the book. I was somewhat worried that the actual test would bear little resemblance to the practice tests, and/or be much harder than the practice tests.
Getting through the preliminaries at the test site was pretty smooth, all things considered. I don’t know why, but I was expecting the test center bureaucracy to be a bit worse than it was. They were actually pretty friendly and professional.
So, all in all, not a bad experience.
I still haven’t completely decided if I should take the ASP.NET 2.0 or the ASP.NET 3.5 test next. I have the book for the 2.0 test, and I’m going to be more familiar with that, so that’s the easy way to go. On the other hand, the 3.5 certification would look a little better on my resume.

C# cookbook, 2nd Edition

Some of the “recipes” in this book are proving quite helpful in my attempts to learn everything I need to know to get through the 70-536 exam. There’s a newer version of the book out now, but it’s this older version that I’m using via Safari.
Here are a few of the useful recipes:

  • Recipe 8.6. Using Event Logs in Your Application
  • Recipe 8.11. Implementing a Simple Performance Counter
  • Recipe 8.16. Determining Current appdomain Settings Information
  • Recipe 17.3. Encrypting and Decrypting a File
  • Recipe 17.16. Securing Stream Data
  • Recipe 20.2. Controlling a Service

C# 3.0 Unleashed

I’ve been doing a lot of supplementary reading to try and get myself to the point where I can pass the 70-536 exam. I’ve found a couple of books on Safari that have been pretty useful. C# 3.0 Unleashed: With the .NET Framework 3.5, in particular, has a lot of useful content. I’m putting an Amazon link below.

I link to Amazon frequently on this blog, but I never got around to signing up for an affiliate account, so I just went ahead and did that, so if you buy the book from this link, I’ll make a buck or two. Oh, and I just figured out that ABP was interfering with the fancy Amazon links, so I had to go ahead and tweak that again. I like ABP for blocking the really intrusive ads that some sites have, but I’m finding lately that it’s blocking stuff that I actually do want to see. I may have to look into tweaking it a bit more, to let more stuff through.

progress

I finally got through the security chapter in the 70-536 book.  And I got through chapters 13, 14, and 15 today too, so now I’ve just got one more chapter to go.  After that, I’m going to try getting through a practice test and see how I do on that. 

I have a feeling that I’m probably not going to do well on the practice test.  If that happens, I’ve got a few ideas lined up for reviewing the material and trying to get a deeper understanding.  First, I have access to some online training material from Element K through my ACM membership.  I’ll probably try working through some relevant material there and see if that helps.  Second, I’ve been compiling a list of references to coverage of exam topics in other books I own.  I will probably use that as a guide to do some supplemental reading.

crypto trouble

I just finished reading the Cryptography section of the 70-536 book.  While I do understand, conceptually, how all this stuff works, I have to say that I may be in trouble on the test if I really need to memorize the difference between, say, RIPEMD160 and HMACSHA1.  I can’t think of any reasonable mnemonic device that will help me remember that RIPEMD160 is a non-keyed hashing algorithm, and HMACSHA1 is a keyed hashing algorithm.