How to Prepare for the Exam

Preparing for Exam 70-315 requires that you obtain and study materials designed to provide comprehensive information about the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET and their capabilities for Web application development. The following list of materials can help you study and prepare:

• The Visual Studio .NET product CD ” You can develop Web applications using the freely available .NET Framework SDK (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/downloads/howtoget.asp), but I also recommend that you use Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Several questions on the exam will test your skills on Visual Studio .NET. If do not have access to Visual Studio .NET, consider getting a trial version from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/trial.

• MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) Online ” This Web site (http://msdn.microsoft.com) provides access to the most up-to-date product documentation, articles, product support knowledge base, and seminars .

• The .NET Framework Community sites ” Sites such as www.gotdotnet.com and www.asp.net provide the latest news and announcements related to Web application development using the .NET Framework. In addition to accessing the information, you can also discuss your topics of interest with other developers.

• The Exam Cram 2 Web site ” The official Exam Cram 2 Web site (www.examcram2.com) provides various exam preparation tools, such as exam preparation advice, practice tests, questions of the day, and discussion groups.

• Search engines ” Search engines such as www.google.com let you easily find the information you are looking for. You can search for Microsoft-specific information using the Google's Microsoft search Web site, www.google.com/microsoft.

  The Google Groups Web site (groups.google.com) requires a special mention because it not only allows you to post questions in the subject-related newsgroups such as microsoft.public.cert.exam.mcad and microsoft.public.cert.exam.mcsd , but also allows you to search the Usenet archive. You can use the Usenet archive to find out whether other developers have already posted solutions for the problems you are facing .

In addition, you might find any or all of the following materials useful in your exam preparation:

• Self-Study MCAD/MCSD Training Guides ” Que Certification offers a comprehensive self-study training guide for the MCAD and the MCSD for Microsoft .NET exams. The training guides cover these subjects in much greater detail than the Exam Cram 2 books and are designed to teach you everything you need to know about the subject covered by the exam. For the 70-315 exam, refer to the MCAD/MCSD Training Guide: Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Visual C# .NET and Visual Studio .NET (Exam 70-315) by Amit Kalani.

• Classroom training ” Although classroom training can be an expensive solution, many novice developers find classroom training useful. Many companies, including the Microsoft Certified Technical Education Centers (CTECs) and third-party training companies (such as Wintellect and DevelopMentor), offer classroom training on subjects related to the 70-315 exam.

• Other publications ” There's no shortage of materials available about the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET. You can select the topics in which you are having difficulty and then select a book related to that topic for an in-depth study. You can find several books and sample chapters online at the InformIT Web site (www.informit.com).

What This Book Will Not Do

This book will not teach you everything you need to know about the .NET Framework, or even about a given topic. Nor is this book an introduction to computer programming. If you're new to applications development and are looking for an initial preparation guide, check out www.quepublishing.com, where you will find whole sections dedicated to the books about the MCSD/MCAD certifications and computer programming. This book reviews what you need to know before you take the test, with the fundamental purpose dedicated to reviewing the information needed on the Microsoft 70-315 certification exam.

This book uses a variety of teaching and memorization techniques to analyze the exam-related topics and provide ways to input, index, and retrieve everything you'll need to know to pass the test. Once again, it is not an introduction to application development.

What This Book Is Designed to Do

This book is designed to be read as a pointer to the areas of knowledge on which you will be tested . In other words, you might want to read the book one time to get an insight into how comprehensive your knowledge of Web development using the .NET Framework is. The book is also designed to be read shortly before you take the actual test and to give you a distillation of the entire field of Web application development using the Microsoft .NET Framework in as few pages as possible. We think you can use this book to get a sense of the underlying context of any topic in the chapters or to skim for alerts, bullet points, summaries, and topic headings.

We've drawn on material from Microsoft's own listing of knowledge requirements, from other preparation guides, and from the exams themselves . We've also drawn from a battery of third-party test-preparation tools, technical Web sites, and our own experience with application development. Our aim is to walk you through the knowledge you will need, looking over your shoulder, so to speak, and pointing out those things that are important for the exam (study alerts, practice questions, and so on).

The 70-315 exam makes a basic assumption that you already have a strong background with Web application development and its terminology. On the other hand, because the .NET development environment is new, no one can be a complete expert. We've tried to demystify the jargon, acronyms, terms, and concepts, and wherever we think you're likely to blur past an important concept, we've defined the assumptions and premises behind that concept.