Booked myself in for one of the two exams required for the MCTS - .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications certification yesterday. The exam I’m going for is the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development exam (code 70-528). I’m booked in for mid September to do it with New Horizons Ireland at a cost of €140. New Horizons seem to be the only Dublin based exam center available.
The exam focuses on using ASP.Net 2.0 to build highly dynamic, secure and scalable web applications and questions a developers knowledge of such things as standard & custom controls, data access via ADO.Net, web parts, membership, state management, mobile web applications, management & deployment of web apps and much much more. To help me prepare I got the training kit book by Glenn Johnson and Tony Northrup covering this specific exam and reviewed two very highly rated Wrox ASP.Net books which I bought last year. Additionally the fact I’ve been doing most of this stuff in my daily 9 to 5 for a good while now means I’m feeling pretty confident. In fact I anticipate much more difficulty with the other exam required for this certification - the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation exam (code 70-536).
Incidentally I’m also considering going for another certification. It’s the ISEB Foundation Certificate in Software Testing. I think everyone would agree that software testing and software development are very complementary skills. Not sure where this can be done though and if classroom training is required, ideally I would just like to get stuck into a good book for a few weeks.