MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5-Windows Communication Foundation: Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 Windows Communication Foundation (PRO-Certification) |  | Authors: Bruce Johnson, Peter Madziak, Sara Morgan
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Category: Book
List Price: $69.99
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Seller: hightech_computer_books
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 35481
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 640
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 13.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.9
MPN: 978-0-73562-565-5
ISBN: 0735625654
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7882
EAN: 9780735625655
ASIN: 0735625654
Publication Date: September 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Your 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 youâve 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 WCF Certification May 22, 2010
Abdul Sami (Atlanta GA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
As usual, if you know the technology then this is the book to get your certification.
Good choice November 18, 2009
Nattanahel Chaves Moya (Costa Rica)
It's a good book. The topics, the examples, and the Tips are very usefull. If you really want to know about WCF this is the rigth choice.
Best of the MCTS books I've used, but one important flaw in samples June 7, 2009
Andrew Ellsom (Atlanta, GA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I started out thinking this was a pretty decent book and then I ran into a problem with the example code not working properly with the built-in host in VS2008. Seeing that they mention this host in the book (eventually) you would have thought that they would have coded the sample code to work with it. I had to resort to a project file hack I found via Google.
Then comes the exam questions. You think you've studied the book and understood it reasonably well and then you get a question which just looks like nothing you've read so you make a guess, get it wrong and the 'explanation' points you to a chapter in the book as a reference. Go to that chapter and there's nothing that covers that question at all!
I don't get how the official study kit could not even prepare you for the practice exam!! I'm now off to read MSDN as it seems a much more comprehensive source for WCF.
I would change my star rating, but Amazon won't let me. This book just left me frustrated.
 Don't bother, use another book if you intend on passing the exam May 18, 2009
Wiktor Szoltysek (Calgary, AB Canada)
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
Computer 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.
A very comprehensive test-preparation guide March 11, 2009
Michael J. Mcmahon Jr. (Reno, NV USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is quite sufficient in preparing its readers for the associated exam. The materials covered in the first half of the book provide the basics for most WCF interactions and applications. The last half delves into security, transactions, and instancing, amongst other details.
The material itself is well-presented, though some of the forward references make it hard to tie certain aspects together (e.g. message header security with attributes). However, 2 passes through the book should be sufficient to prepare any reader for the test. This was the only study material used (in conjunction with the provided test exams) and I passed the test the first time though.
The test exams are worth a bit of note, as they are not terribly connected to the book material. More than a few of the questions will touch on topics that are not in the book. Moreover, the exam answers will reference chapters in the book that are either different or do not exist. There seems to be a good bit of disconnect between the exam manufacturer and the authors. However, the book itself contains relatively few errors that will cause any problems.
The reason these errors do not affect my rating of the book is that in researching and learning about these other topics, I feel I got a more well-rounded WCF education and that it better-prepared me for the test. Some of these tangents, like the WebServiceHost, COM+, and some other attributes, proved very useful. The additional information made clearer the links between WCF and various other technologies.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. This should be the only resource needed to pass the exam, and it is quite well-written.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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