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Product Description
Product Description
EXAM PREP GUIDE Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-516-and on the job-with this official Microsoft study guide. 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.
Maximize your performance on the exam by mastering the skills and experience measured by these objectives:
- Modeling data
- Managing connections and context
- Querying data
- Manipulating data
- Developing and deploying reliable applications
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.
About the Author
Glenn Johnson is a trainer and writer focusing on ASP.NET, ADO.NET, C#, and .NET internals. He is author of Programming Microsoft® ADO.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I don't know how good this book is as a Training Kit, but as an exposition of data access it is brilliant and lays a sound foundation for further study of most of Microsoft's data access architectures. You need to make all the examples work, especially the illustrations in the text, but if you have knowledge of C# (or VB) and you want to understand data access, look no further.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
i actually liked the book, the way it describes subjects, goes through them, lists examples and solutions. however, the sole purpose of buying the book was to take the exam and this is where it falls down: as interesting as it is, it got me nowhere near a pass in the exam, not the first time, not the second.
i could answer all 200 training questions in my sleep with plenty of spare time plus practical experience. the exam (i took it twice in 2010/11) had two parts: one similarly to the training questions, the other modelled as a project, with multiple choice questions worked into it. overall, i found the exam long and time just about right, unless of course the project-style part throws you off the first time. the nasty bit though, microsoft do not tell you how the score system is structured, i.e. how many points are available for which question and choice, whether a wrong choice can incur negative points, which questions count towards which overall section and so on; all questions are taken 'blindly'. when you then get the score, microsoft will not tell you where you actually made or lost points, what the right or wrong answers are and for what reason. what you do get is some overall summary, such as score total '40%': 'ado.net 50%'; 'linq 30%' and so on, but you'll never even know your score out of the total score and you have to remember and judge for yourself which section each question belongs to. (after the second try, i tried 'reverse' engineer my score and came to approximately 700 points overall, although it still was inconclusive as to whether the 40% were for a pass (70%) or the total (100%).)
i think there's a huge lot to be learned from how you've done at an exam, even if you score no points at all, and the way i make sense of it is that microsoft has licensed (i.e. paying) partners who have access to more exam information and 'sell' this knowledge on to customers (this is my personal guess). my suggestion therefore is that once you've got the experience, let your employer fund you a 3- or 5-day training course and save yourself a lot of time and hustle.
i could answer all 200 training questions in my sleep with plenty of spare time plus practical experience. the exam (i took it twice in 2010/11) had two parts: one similarly to the training questions, the other modelled as a project, with multiple choice questions worked into it. overall, i found the exam long and time just about right, unless of course the project-style part throws you off the first time. the nasty bit though, microsoft do not tell you how the score system is structured, i.e. how many points are available for which question and choice, whether a wrong choice can incur negative points, which questions count towards which overall section and so on; all questions are taken 'blindly'. when you then get the score, microsoft will not tell you where you actually made or lost points, what the right or wrong answers are and for what reason. what you do get is some overall summary, such as score total '40%': 'ado.net 50%'; 'linq 30%' and so on, but you'll never even know your score out of the total score and you have to remember and judge for yourself which section each question belongs to. (after the second try, i tried 'reverse' engineer my score and came to approximately 700 points overall, although it still was inconclusive as to whether the 40% were for a pass (70%) or the total (100%).)
i think there's a huge lot to be learned from how you've done at an exam, even if you score no points at all, and the way i make sense of it is that microsoft has licensed (i.e. paying) partners who have access to more exam information and 'sell' this knowledge on to customers (this is my personal guess). my suggestion therefore is that once you've got the experience, let your employer fund you a 3- or 5-day training course and save yourself a lot of time and hustle.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Expansive yet still incomplete
27 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I just passed this exam. The material that the book does cover, it covers well. The problem is that the exam covers way more material than the book could contain. If you only study the contents of this book and then go to the exam, you will find yourself blindsided by many of the questions. I recommend that this book serve as a foundation to begin studying with. Then, take the practice exams on the included CD. Any time you miss a question, go and read everything related to that topic on MSDN. This will take a lot of time, as much time as it takes to read this thick tome of a book, but you really need to if you want to pass this exam.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Very Incomplete
28 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback
Before I start ranting I will say that what the book covers, it does in a way that is easy to read and understand.
On to the ranting.
I took the 70-516 exam today and did not pass. I received a 640 and of course needed a 700. I was not a slouch in preparing for this exam. I have four years of programming experience on the job. I read through this study guide, twice. I did the suggested practices and took the practice exams in study mode from the accompanying CD. I read the MSDN articles suggested by the learning plans after taking the practice tests. I even signed up for a month of pluralsight.net and watched every training video they had on the Entity Framework, OData, Linq Quering etc...
When I went in to take the exam I felt confident that I knew the material and would pass with now problems [ I did on my previous two exams 70-513 and 70-516 using the same techniques ]. But while taking the exam I was completely blindsided by many of the questions. In particular what the questions covered and how much detail they went into.
There is no coverage in the book or the practice tests for case studies or testlets. It does not focus on the areas needed to pass the exam and gives only a very basic overview of the topics that could be on the exam.
So in conclusion. Since this book is a training kit for a particular exam I would expect after reading it and utilizing the resources suggested by the book to be able to pass the exam as long as I did my part. I did my part, the book did not. If you buy this book make sure it is not your only resource for studying. Make sure you know each objective completely and thoroughly. A passing knowledge of a subject will not get you through the exam and neither will this book.
On to the ranting.
I took the 70-516 exam today and did not pass. I received a 640 and of course needed a 700. I was not a slouch in preparing for this exam. I have four years of programming experience on the job. I read through this study guide, twice. I did the suggested practices and took the practice exams in study mode from the accompanying CD. I read the MSDN articles suggested by the learning plans after taking the practice tests. I even signed up for a month of pluralsight.net and watched every training video they had on the Entity Framework, OData, Linq Quering etc...
When I went in to take the exam I felt confident that I knew the material and would pass with now problems [ I did on my previous two exams 70-513 and 70-516 using the same techniques ]. But while taking the exam I was completely blindsided by many of the questions. In particular what the questions covered and how much detail they went into.
There is no coverage in the book or the practice tests for case studies or testlets. It does not focus on the areas needed to pass the exam and gives only a very basic overview of the topics that could be on the exam.
So in conclusion. Since this book is a training kit for a particular exam I would expect after reading it and utilizing the resources suggested by the book to be able to pass the exam as long as I did my part. I did my part, the book did not. If you buy this book make sure it is not your only resource for studying. Make sure you know each objective completely and thoroughly. A passing knowledge of a subject will not get you through the exam and neither will this book.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Not enough detail, some topics not covered at all
15 Feb 2012
Format:Paperback
I bought this book with the expectation, due to a perusal of the Amazon reviews, that it wouldn't be sufficient to pass the exam. It lived up to those expectations.
I can't go into any great detail due to Microsoft's non-disclosure agreement, but I will say that there are questions on the exam that require intimate knowledge of particular classes that are not referenced at all in this book. As others have noted, topics that are covered are not covered in enough detail, but there are also topics not covered that should be.
In the end, I managed to pass with a score of 94%. This was achieved by purchasing, in addition to this book, Julia Lerman's "Programming Entity Framework" (for the necessary detail on EF) and relying heavily MSDN articles for other topics.
I can't go into any great detail due to Microsoft's non-disclosure agreement, but I will say that there are questions on the exam that require intimate knowledge of particular classes that are not referenced at all in this book. As others have noted, topics that are covered are not covered in enough detail, but there are also topics not covered that should be.
In the end, I managed to pass with a score of 94%. This was achieved by purchasing, in addition to this book, Julia Lerman's "Programming Entity Framework" (for the necessary detail on EF) and relying heavily MSDN articles for other topics.
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