Microsoft is working on and has announced a new certification program called the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM). This is not a replacement for the Architect program and it is not an enhancement to the existing programs like MCITP.
From Trika's blog, you can see that this certification is not for the light hearted. It costs 18,000 for 3 weeks of training and 3 exams and a lab exam. It is hard for many people to be able to go to this training in Redmond for 3 weeks straight. But this is the only the first time it is offered. I would love to be able to do this, but 3 weeks is a LONG time to be away from work and family.
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/products/default.mspx#E1C
http://blogs.msdn.com/trika/archive/2008/06/26/more-on-the-certified-master-programs-from-me-per-the-program-owner.aspx
I was really looking forward to this certification, but it might be more than I am willing to do right now. Well, on to the next set of certifications that I am studying for, MCPD and a few MCTSs.
Monday, June 30, 2008
FREE Microsoft E-Learning Course Offer
Microsoft is currently running a promotion that allows anyone to try out one of its many E-Learning Courses for free! This offer expires today, the 30th of June, 2008. So, if you're interested you'd better hurry.
You can register to obtain your promotional code for a free E-Learning Course by navigating to this webpage. One prerequisite is that you have a Windows Live ID. If you do not have one, then you can learn how to get one here. Once, you have registered using your Windows Live ID, you will receive a promotional code. Using this code, you can take your pick of one of many applicable E-Learning Courses and sign up for it for free! I believe that the subscription to this course will last you one whole year. So, it's definitely worth getting the code even if you don't have the time to spare at the present moment. Whats more is that... It's free!
If you have no idea what I mean by an E-Learning Course, you can read more about it here or, take a tour and sit through a sample course here (requires Silverlight). I sat through one and found it to be quite well rounded.
One more thing to be aware of is that the code will expire 30 days after you register for it. So, don't wait too long to pick a course if y ou plan on it. Since I plan on appearing for the 70-502 Cert in the not-so-distant future, I will registering for a WPF E-Learning Course. So, I'm off to do that and grab a bite to eat at the same time.
Happy Learning!
-Merwyn
You can register to obtain your promotional code for a free E-Learning Course by navigating to this webpage. One prerequisite is that you have a Windows Live ID. If you do not have one, then you can learn how to get one here. Once, you have registered using your Windows Live ID, you will receive a promotional code. Using this code, you can take your pick of one of many applicable E-Learning Courses and sign up for it for free! I believe that the subscription to this course will last you one whole year. So, it's definitely worth getting the code even if you don't have the time to spare at the present moment. Whats more is that... It's free!
If you have no idea what I mean by an E-Learning Course, you can read more about it here or, take a tour and sit through a sample course here (requires Silverlight). I sat through one and found it to be quite well rounded.
One more thing to be aware of is that the code will expire 30 days after you register for it. So, don't wait too long to pick a course if y ou plan on it. Since I plan on appearing for the 70-502 Cert in the not-so-distant future, I will registering for a WPF E-Learning Course. So, I'm off to do that and grab a bite to eat at the same time.
Happy Learning!
-Merwyn
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Exam 70-536
I recently passed my first Microsoft Certification Exam - Exam 70-536: The .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation. I thought I'd blog a bit about my experience preparing for the exam, lessons learnt and the exam in general.
The Exam
The 70-536 exam is a gateway exam of sorts for most .NET Developers looking to earn an MCTS or MCPD certification for Windows, Web or Enterprise application development. Currently, it is a prerequisite for 3 .Net 2.0 Certs and 6 newly added .NET 3.5 Certs. I am pursuing an MCTS Certification for WPF, which is why this exam was a logical starting point.
The Exam tests a developer's skills as related to working with the .NET Framework in the following 7 areas.
Resources
The Microsoft Learning Website makes a few suggestions for resources that one could use when preparing for this exam. You can check them out here.
I used the MS Press Book - MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft .NET
Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation.
The book does a good job of covering the 7 skills sets you will be quizzed on. It comes with a companion CD that you can use to install practice tests on your machine at home. These practice tests are very helpful if this is your first certification exam as they give you a good feel for how the questions on the final exam will look like.
The CD also contains code samples that you can use to complete the Labs detailed in the book. If you do not own a copy of Visual Studio .NET or 2005, fear not... the book also comes with its very own copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, licensed to you for 6 months from the time you install it.
Another interesting resource that I found was this Live Meeting from Microsoft. It is titled "Cram for Exams! 70-536" and thats exactly what it does. In one hour, it gives you a brief overview of the exam and the various sections as I mentioned above. The Speaker also works out some sample questions and has some good tips for the exam itself.
Finally
Code, Code and then some...
I cannot stress enough the importance of exploring the .NET Framework yourself by writing your own little test applications. Nothing sticks in your head as a line of code that you wrote. A majority of questions on the test will be code-based and there's a good chance that you will see some classes or structures for the first time at the Testing Center if you haven't been coding regularly. So again, take the time to understand what the Framework has to offer by writing a little code yourself.
Happy Learning!!
-Merwyn
The Exam
The 70-536 exam is a gateway exam of sorts for most .NET Developers looking to earn an MCTS or MCPD certification for Windows, Web or Enterprise application development. Currently, it is a prerequisite for 3 .Net 2.0 Certs and 6 newly added .NET 3.5 Certs. I am pursuing an MCTS Certification for WPF, which is why this exam was a logical starting point.
The Exam tests a developer's skills as related to working with the .NET Framework in the following 7 areas.
- Developing applications that use system types and collections (15 percent)
- Implementing service processes, threading, and application domains in a .NET Framework application (11 percent)
- Embedding configuration, diagnostic, management, and installation features into a .NET Framework application (14 percent)
- Implementing serialization and input/output functionality in a .NET Framework application (18 percent)
- Improving the security of .NET Framework applications by using the .NET Framework security features (20 percent)
- Implementing interoperability, reflection, and mailing functionality in a .NET Framework application (11 percent)
- Implementing globalization, drawing, and text manipulation functionality in a .NET Framework application (11 percent)
Resources
The Microsoft Learning Website makes a few suggestions for resources that one could use when preparing for this exam. You can check them out here.
I used the MS Press Book - MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft .NET
Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation.The book does a good job of covering the 7 skills sets you will be quizzed on. It comes with a companion CD that you can use to install practice tests on your machine at home. These practice tests are very helpful if this is your first certification exam as they give you a good feel for how the questions on the final exam will look like.
The CD also contains code samples that you can use to complete the Labs detailed in the book. If you do not own a copy of Visual Studio .NET or 2005, fear not... the book also comes with its very own copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, licensed to you for 6 months from the time you install it.
Another interesting resource that I found was this Live Meeting from Microsoft. It is titled "Cram for Exams! 70-536" and thats exactly what it does. In one hour, it gives you a brief overview of the exam and the various sections as I mentioned above. The Speaker also works out some sample questions and has some good tips for the exam itself.
Finally
Code, Code and then some...
I cannot stress enough the importance of exploring the .NET Framework yourself by writing your own little test applications. Nothing sticks in your head as a line of code that you wrote. A majority of questions on the test will be code-based and there's a good chance that you will see some classes or structures for the first time at the Testing Center if you haven't been coding regularly. So again, take the time to understand what the Framework has to offer by writing a little code yourself.
Happy Learning!!
-Merwyn
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Silverlight 2.0 beta2 is out!!
Last weekend Silverlight 2.0 beta 2 was released by Microsoft. Overall it has some nice features like the new tab control, but existing Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 code might need a few changes to get things to work. One things that I wanted to tell people about is the SDK is be a pain for me to install since I had the beta1 SDK installed. I have to remove a patch to VS2008 but to do that you need the CD/DVD that you installed from to get it to work. Well I did not have that disc with me when I started to put the SDK on and I have been very busy and have not had a chance to get this installed yet.
I will post more as I play with this new version. There is a go-live license so people can start commercializing this now.
I will post more as I play with this new version. There is a go-live license so people can start commercializing this now.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Linq for .NET 1.1 and 2.0??
Linq is a nice feature of .NET 3.5, but it means that to use it people need to upgrade to VS2008 and C# 3.0. That was the plan, and that is what I did. But people don't need to do this still. There are a couple of implementations of Linq that you can use on earlier versions of Visual Studio and .NET. This shows that Linq is an easy to use tool that people are enjoying using. Now, none of the other implementations are perfect, but it's a start.
.NET 2.0 Implementation
.NET 1.1 and 2.0 Implementation
.NET 2.0 Implementation
.NET 1.1 and 2.0 Implementation
Friday, May 16, 2008
Silverlight Streaming and Isolated Storage
Microsoft is really pushing to enhance their presence online with Silverlight. A service that they provide for people is part of the Live.com site. Microsoft Silverlight Streaming is a Silverlight app and media hosting site that Microsoft provides with 10G of online space. This is a free service from them.
With Silverlight 2.0 beta1, the app compiles into an .xap file that can be uploaded to the Streaming service I went over this in a previous post. To test this out I made a small sample of a TicTacToe game. I got lazy and made it use colors instead of graphics for each square. I also just had the computer pick a random empty square to make things simpler. One thing that I wanted to test out was the isolated storage so that you could keep track of your scores locally on the machine since this is a web-based app. It was pretty easy to setup IsolatedStorage to save this data using a stream writer. IsolatedStorage is very limted, but for this example I am only storing 3 ints, so I was not worried.
One interesting thing is that a Technical Evangelist from Microsoft (who will remain nameless) said that you could not store data locally using a Silverlight application. During his MSDN Roadshow, I pointed out that actually you could do that and he was abit surprised. Of course then he stated that Microsoft might just remove that ability plus it is very limited storage, so to be careful with it.
People always ask for source code for samples like this, so here is the source. Now, I know this little game is not that exciting, but it's Silverlight, with local storage, and using the Silverlight Streaming site, so that is what is cool.
With Silverlight 2.0 beta1, the app compiles into an .xap file that can be uploaded to the Streaming service I went over this in a previous post. To test this out I made a small sample of a TicTacToe game. I got lazy and made it use colors instead of graphics for each square. I also just had the computer pick a random empty square to make things simpler. One thing that I wanted to test out was the isolated storage so that you could keep track of your scores locally on the machine since this is a web-based app. It was pretty easy to setup IsolatedStorage to save this data using a stream writer. IsolatedStorage is very limted, but for this example I am only storing 3 ints, so I was not worried.
One interesting thing is that a Technical Evangelist from Microsoft (who will remain nameless) said that you could not store data locally using a Silverlight application. During his MSDN Roadshow, I pointed out that actually you could do that and he was abit surprised. Of course then he stated that Microsoft might just remove that ability plus it is very limited storage, so to be careful with it.
People always ask for source code for samples like this, so here is the source. Now, I know this little game is not that exciting, but it's Silverlight, with local storage, and using the Silverlight Streaming site, so that is what is cool.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Woes of Playing the Beta Game
There is alot of beta software out there. Google release alot of web applications as beta for years, Silverlight 2.0 is beta, you can get beta (or earlier) copies of Window and more. One thing that people have to be aware of beta software is that it is not complete and you risk things by using them. Microsoft just released a beta 1 for SP1 for the new .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio. Microsoft is saying that this service pack fro .NET will help speed things up and make installers smaller to name a few things. The problem is that beta software could cause you problems if you use it.
It This article on The Register give a clue to the latest issues with people that play the beta software game. So having the beta version of Silverlight and the beta version of .NET 3.5 will make it so that you could have an error installing the SP1 beta or make it where you cannot do your Silverlight development. Scott Guthrie says that they will be putting out new Silverlight tools in the next few weeks to help with this.
I limit the amount of beta software that I use. I am playing around with Silverlight beta 2.0 and will not be putting the beta of the service pack on my machines. Keep reading this blog... (and Scott's) for more info on this issue.
It This article on The Register give a clue to the latest issues with people that play the beta software game. So having the beta version of Silverlight and the beta version of .NET 3.5 will make it so that you could have an error installing the SP1 beta or make it where you cannot do your Silverlight development. Scott Guthrie says that they will be putting out new Silverlight tools in the next few weeks to help with this.
I limit the amount of beta software that I use. I am playing around with Silverlight beta 2.0 and will not be putting the beta of the service pack on my machines. Keep reading this blog... (and Scott's) for more info on this issue.
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