More on 70-541 from Nadeem's Blog

 

TS Exam 70-541: WSS 3.0 - Application Development

I took this exam on Friday and I want to share the following with anyone who is interested in taking it:

1. For a limited time (while it's still in beta), you can take the exam for free using promotion code BTA541.  You save $125 (and you don't have to deal with your company's beloved expense-tracking and reimbursement system).  Register at www.prometric.com.
2. Don't bother looking for practice exams or Microsoft e-Learning courses that will help you prepare for this.  There isn't anything as far as I can see.
3. Ishai Sagi has a blog post with some tips for this exam and the MOSS equivalent (70-542).  I also need to thank Ishai for posting the promo code.
4. Don't rush.  There's more than enough time to think about each question thoroughly.
5. There seemed to be a lot of questions on Records Management, which I wasn't expecting because that's more of a MOSS thing.  But I guess it integrates with WSS-only spaces, so they saw it as fair game.  On the other hand, I didn't notice there being a lot of questions on custom field types like Ishai mentioned.
6. It looked to me as though the exam is in beta for some good reasons.  I am very sure I saw questions where the only sensible answer had a typo or two in the code.  And I suppose I could be wrong but I swear I looked at some answer choices line by line and couldn't notice any difference except a variable name.  For example, in at least one case it looked as though the only difference in the choices was a change from the word "site" to "web" but only in the variable name (they probably meant to change the object type too but missed that).  So if the exact same code appears in two different choices for the answer, what if I wanted to pick that code.. which one do I choose?

I found that when writing this exam, the following (which is true in general) is especially true in this case: You can often see to it that you probably get the right answer even if you get to a question where you've never seen the code before.  Maybe a question is asking about a certain part of the SharePoint object model that you have never encountered in your work, or whatever may be the case.  You really cannot (or at least you should not) be completely prepared for any possible code question.  It would be a huge, wasted effort if you memorized all aspects of the SharePoint OM and CAML syntax.

So what do you do? Answer what you can where you know your stuff, and then note the following to help you with the rest:

• Sometimes the code in a multiple choice answer selection simply doesn't make sense.  You have to realize that code is not something magical that happens to do what you want as long as it's written in a certain way.  When you code, you are providing instructions to something that can't read your mind and doesn't know what you want to do.  So in your code you have to be explicit about the things you intend to do and what exactly it is that you're doing these things on.  So if the code doesn't, in some way, incorporate an instruction or piece of information that anything or anyone would need in order to do the right task on the right thing, it couldn't possibly be correct.  I hope this is clear.
• It may not hurt to be a little subjective about the code that is presented to you as possible answers to a question.  Ask yourself things like:
  • "If I was Microsoft (or VTI, I suppose) and I created this object model, would I really expose this method on this object with these parameters in this way?".
  • "Is this good code?" (of course, it doesn't have to be in order to be the right answer...  But read the following.)
• If a possible answer to a question is built on an object model or markup language syntax that really deviates from standard best practices (like using enums, following the OOP paradigm, etc) then it's possibly more likely to be a wrong answer.  I find that "embarassing" examples of a programming model or syntax are usually conspicuously absent from SDK documentation, learning material and other publications that a company puts out.  It's usually us bloggers that find and expose these sorts of things.
• You don't need to get every answer right.  So don't worry about it and move onto the next one.

Now it's time for the MOSS exam.  This one's going to be tough...

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