I finally managed to pass the  TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundationdevelopment Exam" today.. I was able to score 876..The passing score is 700..

Here is my experience ..

The Exam
The exam was tougher (and better) than the previous Microsoft exams I had taken.. Microsoft has really done a good job revamping the certifications.. I was not surprised to see that I had not scored high in the sections relating to Interoperability(aargh...COM ) and Reflection both of which I never had used in my development so far

I had a LOT of questions regarding Security, Serialization and Internationalization.. no Regular Expression questions  .. 2 -3 questions regarding Services, 3-4 on COM , 4-5 questions on IO, 4-5 questions on Debugging and Management features, 2-3 on App Domains and Reflection..

I had to answer 45 questions in 120 minutes..I went through all the 45 questions within the first 10 minutes to get an idea of what to expect ... Then I started answering the questions sequentially marking questions that I was not sure of for later review ..

I was able to complete all the questions in 40 minutes.. and spent the next 30 minutes reviewing the marked questions .. After that I spent 10 minutes going through all the questions and finished 20 mins ahead of time ...


So here are the resources I had used for the exam

Books

1.  MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation
   
   This is the only one book that is available as an Exam Guide for this Exam. Unfortunately it has a lot of errors and typos (there are around 2 pages of errata! for this book). 
   
   Nevertheless it is the only book available and helps you in getting an idea of what to expect for the exam. It also has a practice test (around 300 questions) , and a learning plan (with links to MSDN) which are pretty helpful. I was lazy in trying to take the exam questions only one day before the exam and ended up not taking all the questions!
   
   
2. Practical .NET2 and C#2
   This is one of my favorite book on C# and is an excellent book especially for C++ programmers transitioning to C#(lots of comparisons made between C++ and C#). Even though the book says that the user level is Introductory, most of the stuff discussed are advanced stuff.
   
   The book covers around 70% of the objectives required by the exam and is a good read for any professional developer interested in knowing more about .NET and C#

Internet

1. MSDN
   This is the BEST resource you will find for the exam. I ended up spending most of my preparation time in looking at information from MSDN. Especially most of the weird classes that I had never used in my entire .net development lifetime like  IAppicationManagerTrustInterface, AuthorizationRule, SACL ..you get the idea..
   
   
2. Wikis
   I did stumble across an incomplete wikis for the exam ..Even though it was incomplete, most of the sections had links to MSDN and served as a pretty good Section-MSDN lookup
   Wiki 1 
   

Exam Simulators
I had used the Transcender Exam simulator (very sparsely..last 2 days). I went through the 150 questions in Transcender and scored almost 85%. I found the questions far more easier than the exams I encountered on the test. I would not suggest spending amount on the exam Simulator. You are better off referring to MSDN.

For those of you looking at TestKing beware! I have read that it is just a collection of Brain Dump questions and I personally consider using it as Cheating! I think that Microsoft has a case against them..


If you want to get an idea of what certifications are available and if it is worth taking the certifications have a look at my previous bog entry(almost 1.5 years old!!) at http://hariedge.com/2006/06/16/net-certification.aspx ....

More Exams

So i am aiming for the MCPD: Enterprise Applications Developer certification and this requires you to pass 5 exams. So 4 more to go. I will be taking them in the following order

1. MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications
2. MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Applications
3. MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Windows Applications
4. Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework

So its ASP.NET next !!

Good luck everyone..

Hari