MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-516): Accessing Data with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 1st Edition

This book is full of great examples and exercises that really help you learn. It also comes with a practice test and a 15% off coupon for the test! My girlfriend can't do anything for me that this book didn't do!

It's an excellent book!A good way of reading and learning.Simple exercises, but easy to fix, in addition to practice tests that help a lot.

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.

There was supposed to be an accompanying CD with the book. Even in the book itself it cleaarly says there should be an accompanying CD, but there was no CD. Nowhere on Amazon did it say that there was no accompanying CD.

I bought this book six months ago and have read through it twice. I also used the Transcender exam prep software, but still did not pass on my first attempt (640). As others here have said, this book is written well, but you will be blind-sided if you rely on it for preparing for the exam. It's a shame that a MS book fails so completely in preparing you for one of their exams. I don't know whether to blame this book or the exam, but in either case, you need to really reach out to other sources like MSDN.

This book provides a good overview of each of the data access strategies that Microsoft has included with .NET 4. I would've preferred more time on Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL and less on DataSets (typed and untyped), but overall provides a good look at each of the strategies.

This book does not prepare you for the real exam. It is missing several key sections found in the exam. Had I known this before purchasing, I never would have bought it...

Fairly good introduction to data access in the .NET framework but, as other reviewers have suggested, not nearly enough information to pass the 70-516 exam.