Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation (Pro Certification)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer
discounts of up to 90% on
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation (Pro Certification). Check out the link below:
>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation (Pro Certification) ReviewComputer Science books usually fall into one of three categories:
1] The truly rare gems , books that you read from beginning to end, they don't feel like a chore to read. I've come across a few such books -"Head First: Design Patterns" is one of them.
2] The books that aren't quite perfect -maybe the content is too dry, or the technical details are a bit off, but all in all , your time is not wasted reading them (or even skimming). You get some use out of it, and you learn something new. Finally, there is the last category.
3] The absolute bottom of the pile, books so bad and in-cohesive, that they leave you furious after having read the garbage in the first place.
After having purchased this book, to study for the 70-503 exam, I can state without a doubt in my mind that this book clearly falls in the 3rd category of books and should be avoided at all costs. There are much better books out there for studying for the WCF exam (even if they aren't official training kits), and as a reference guide this book is useless. Heck, you'd be better off just studying from MSDN. You WILL fail the exam if this book is your only study material.
Large chunks of the book are just copied directly from MSDN, specifically the instrumentation and security chapters. Even the same code examples are copied, as well as the general formatting. You'll be trying to read areas of the book, not understand what the authors are trying to say, go to MSDN for clarification, only to realize that they are the same. Of course, just like a student attempts to avoid getting caught for plagiarism by changing the occasional words, the authors have made the same futile attempts. For example: compare the Performance Counter section on pg 312, with the corresponding article on MSDN. The authors have even decided to copy the full registry key entries, without thinking whether or not they are relevant for the exam -they are not. To make matters worse, when the authors weren't cutting and pasting from MSDN, they were reusing the same text from other areas in the book (for example, duplicate exam tips, pg 362, pg 345, and duplicate tables pg 361, pg 344).
The book is also missing important WCF information such as service contract operator overloading, streaming, serviceKnownTypes, onserializing, releaseContextMode, IErrorHandler, etc. These are good to know items for the exam, and any solid WCF reference book should include them. Even exam objectives that are stated to be in the book (in the tear-out section), are missing. For example "Manage consistency between life cycles, sessions, concurrency, and bindings" is missing from Chapter 2, Lesson 2. The authors also seem to have avoided important issues such as the default InstanceContextMode (it's PerSession), and mentioning that the Light Weight Transaction Protocol isn't supported by ANY binding.
Missing content would have been somewhat justifiable if there simply was no more room in the book to put it in, however instead the authors have filled the book with bloat, tons of it. Pointless exercises, overly verbose labs, condescending requirements, and useless practice questions. Does every chapter need to be prepended with the requirements, and that you require Visual Studio 2008 to read this chapter. Why do the authors insist on telling readers that they require 384megs of RAM and a 1024x768 screen? The WCF 70-503 is not a beginner exam, it's a given that users taking this exam will know how to use a computer and install/use Visual Studio. The sample exam questions were a poor emulation of the actual exam questions. The bundled CD offers no extra practice questions, instead it's just a repeat of the questions in the book. In fact, the bundled CD's (2 of them), offer nothing new to the book, and should not have been included -the Visual Studio trial can just be downloaded from Microsoft's website. Other bloat includes pointless tables that just fill space, i.e. Algorithm Suites and Distinguishing Values on pg 346, -don't worry you don't need to memorize it for the actual exam.
If you are serious about taking the exam, or you are looking for a good WCF reference book, I recommend reading "Programming WCF Services" by Juval Lowy instead. I fail to see how anyone could give this WCF training kit book a review of more than one star. Compare the two books and you will see that I mean, it's that clear cut. What a difference it makes, when the author actually knows what he's talking about.
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation (Pro Certification) OverviewYour 2-in-1 Self-Paced Training Kit
EXAM PREP GUIDE
Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-503-and on the job. Work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover each exam objective. Then, reinforce and apply what you've learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. This official Microsoft study guide is designed to help you make the most of your study time.
Maximize your performance on the exam by learning to:
Define and implement service contracts
Configure client and service endpoints across transport protocols
Customize service behavior; host and expose services
Add instrumentation to services, including end-to-end tracing
Implement transport, message, and user level security
Consume services through proxies and agents
Manage the service life cycle-instances, sessions, transactions, concurrency
PRACTICE TESTS
Assess your skills with the practice tests on CD. You can work through hundreds of questions using multiple testing modes to meet your specific learning needs. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers including a customized learning path that describes how and where to focus your studies.
Your kit includes:
15% exam discount from Microsoft. Offer expires 12/31/13.
Official self-paced study guide.
Practice tests with multiple, customizable testing options and a learning plan based on your results.
225+ practice and review questions.
Code samples in Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# on CD.
90-day trial of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition.
Case scenarios, exercises, and best practices.
Fully searchable eBook of this guide.
A Note Regarding the CD or DVD
The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.
Want to learn more information about
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation (Pro Certification)?
>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
