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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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 would say that is the best training kit in the MCTS developer series. It's quite clear, to the point, keep fuss and MS advertising to a minimum, and does a decent job of covering such a complex, varied and "stratified" subject as MS data access techniques. With ADO.NET connected classes, disconnected classes, LINQ to xml, LINQ to SQL, EF, WCF Data services etc preparing for this exam can quickly turn into a nightmare, but this book manages to strike a nice balance among the subjects and keep complexity to a minimum. I also like the fact that GUI applications are used for the exercises instead of just limiting oneself to console application which would not really make the point of how many of these techniques are actually used in the real world. As with the other training kit though, do not fool yourself into thinking that studying this book alone can prepare you for the exam.It's a very reasonable way to get you started, but you will definitely need some more reading. I can recommend  Programming Entity Framework: Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO.NET Entity Framework  for a good foundation on the EF theory, and  Entity Framework 4.0 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in .NET)  to get your hands dirty and see how EF works in practice.And if you want to get more confortable with LINQ to XML and LINQ in general I would go for Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2010 Overall, if you are preparing for the exam I would say that this training kit is worth reading and working through and it's definitely superior to the other books in the series on the Web or Windows development exams.

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.

Libro che non può mancare nella collezione di programmatori professionisti o per chi sta seguendo un percorso di certificazione. Esposizione chiara e ricca di esempi.

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.

Pretty good

Great book for preparing 516. This is an introductory textbook, don't expect to pass the exam by reading it unless you have a lot of experience which backs up all this theory.

Testo indispensabile per acquisire la certificazione riportata nel titolo, è un "mattone" della programmazione! Chiaro ed esplicativo, scritto davvero molto bene.