Tips For Exam 70-536

I'm happy to report that I recently passed Exam 70-536: .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation. This test is one of the requirements necessary to obtain Microsoft's new MCTS certification. And since the MCTS certification is a pillar in the new accreditation structure, its relevance to the professional developer cannot be ignored.

Here are a few suggestions I'll toss out to anyone interested in preparing for this exam:

1. Purchase a good certification study guide. I used the one by Microsoft Press (click here for details) mainly because it was the only one available at the time I needed it. The book wasn't terribly noteworthy (and it even contained some minor errors) but at the end of the day it served its purpose as a prompt to direct my personal study times. By next year new study guides with even better authors (such as Amit Kalani) should be hitting the shelves.


2. Take notes on topics as you learn. I found it valuable to jot down notes as I studied the API's in the framework. These notes were also a helpful review during the last few days leading up to the exam.


3. Become good friends with MSDN. Though a study guide is good, it will only get you so far. The scope of this exam is very large and MSDN provides many helpful supplements to fill in the gaps.
   

.NET Framework 3.0 Released!

The .NET Framework version 3.0 was released this week. This iteration sees no change to the existing class library or the underlying CLR. Instead, it simply adds some significant new APIs on top of the existing 2.0 framework.

The new APIs are as follows: Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows CardSpace. Click here to download the redistributable.

Windows Vista as a Development Platform

As Windows Vista RC2 hit last week I've come across several mildly disturbing articles regarding the integrity of Vista as a development platform. First off was the announcement of SP1 Beta for Visual Studio 2005 on Somasegar's blog. Sounds like good news, right? Well, further down he also reveals that Vista will not support Visual Studio 2002 or Visual Studio 2003. In addition, he admits that Visual Studio 2005 will most likely suffer from compatibility issues beyond those addressed in SP1. In my mind this doesn't communicate strong support for what is supposed to be Microsoft's flagship development platform. I imagine this issue could easily stop most developers from trying Vista anytime soon due to the fact that they still need to continue supporting older applications via older versions of Visual Studio.

There have also been rumors going back and forth debating Java's ability to keep up with the new "Aero" look and feel in Vista. Thankfully, it appears as if this will only be an issue for older versions of Java.

On a positive note, IIS 7 in Vista will finally elevate PHP to a first class citizen. The newest version of Microsoft's webserver is on target to introduce a FastCGI host. Such a change will honor the single-process-per-request execution model of PHP, but do so much more efficiently than traditional CGI. For more information check out this blog entry by Mike Volodarsky (member of the IIS team).