Just passed 70-320 - and here is my feedback

[bb]

I just passed 70-320 with score of 905, for anyone about to take, here
are some pointers which may be of help...

*Study Areas*
(small indicates less than 3 questions on the topic area, medium
indicates areas you really need to know well to pass the exam)
small - relationships between datasets expressed in xml
small - debugging processes and serviced components
small - deploying serviced components
small - securing serviced component function calls
small - windows services
medium - mbr / mbv remoting objects
medium - soap headers, advanced web services, tcp/http channels
medium - hosting remoting objects in iis
medium - declarative attributes for serviced components

*Books*
I used both MSPress and Amit Kalani. Kalani was definately the best, the
chapter level tests were extremely helpful, url for book is here >
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789728249/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/026-2596496-5435642

Hope this is of some help, without giving away too much.

regards

bb

[Yorkie]

Congratulations! And thanks for the info, as it's going
to be my next exam.

Can I ask how many questions you got and the amount of
time you were allowed ? Is it the standard 55-60
questions and 2 hours ?

Also, where all the questions multi-choice or were there
any drag-and-drop order sequences ?

Cheers,

Yorkie

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[bb]

57 questions in 120 minutes + an extra 15 minutes for a survey at the
end which i didnt participate in, as i was too excited to get my score.

all questions were multi choice

only 2 of the 57 were the multiselect multiple choice questions, i.e.
select two of the following.

out of interest, which book (if any) are you using?

and i forgot to mention in my previous message, things that never came
up (im not saying dont revise these, but in my experience they were not
covered)..

xpath
xmlschema/xsd
sqlxml
xml document validation
asynchronous calls to remoting or webservices
xml wire formatting
soapsuds
calling unmanaged code

[Yorkie]

I've got the full MS Self-paced Training Kit, but after
buying the SQL Server 2000 book by MS Press for 70-229, I
wasn't too impressed. I ended up buying the Que book by
Thomas Moore which helped me pass that exam, so I've now
gone and bought the Kalani books. Very easy to read and
nothing like wading through mud like the MS books!

You got a very good score on the exam! Have you got any
more lined up, or have you got your MCAD now ?

>.
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[bb]

well ...

i previously took the c# web apps one, and failed miserably with 611

i did quite a lot of c# development about a year ago, then went back to
a vb /asp project, then tried to do the c# web app exam by just reading
the books and not doing any practical devleopment work .. and it showed!!

i run the mcad training programme for this organisation, we are putting
about 3 rounds of 3 developers through the programme. so its painful
when i failed ;-)

im probably going to go for the sqlserver next before doing the retake
of the webapps. as ive quite a few years sqlserver development under my
belt.

as for the high score, yes i surprised myself - ive not done a lot of
remoting code in actual projects, however i have done a few soap related
projects.

my method for passing this exam was
1) 3 days of dedicated cram immediately before the exam
2) using those chapter tests and recording my scores and using that as
indicators on needing to re-read
3) writing down my own summaries of each chapter (some cut and paste,
and some note taking)
4) when doing the exam go through all the questions only answering ones
you definately know the answer to (i answered 37 on the first pass
through - took approx an hour)
5) dont use the mark for review option
6) on the second pass through pick off all ones which you can best guess
( this left about 5 questions)
7) final pass through wild guesses - after this pass i had 8 minutes left
8) dont under any circumstances return to the questions and start
changing answers - just click finish (even if you have time left)

worked for me this time ( i didnt use this method last time, and felt
that i changed answers, and didnt have a proper strategy first time through)

db

[Yorkie]

Thanks for the info! The 70-229 one is pretty
straightforward if you've got SQL Server experience. I
was surprised that it didn't cover all the areas I
thought it would (or could).

It mainly concentrated on the new SQL Server 2000
additions - partitioned views and linked servers, indexed
views, user-defined functions - along with some questions
on replication, logical design and a lot on performance
tuning and security/ownership chains.

The downside with the 70-229 exam is that there are only
44 questions, which means that (a) you've got less margin
for error as each question counts for a bigger
percentage, and (b) the questions are quite long,
especially when you've got Exhibits and scripts to read
through.

The Que book by Thomas Moore was brilliant, though.
Highly recommended.

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