Okay, that was a serious mouthful of a heading, but then again, this book does cover Exams 70-305 and 70-315 so it's certainly not a waste of time or effort if you want to get it. So basic stats before I start my review.

Author: Jeff Webb with Microsoft Corporation

Website to Order: Microsoft Press Shop (2nd page scroll and you'll find it)

(http://www.mspress.com.au/)

Rating: 

This book is hard-core, and that's the nice way of saying it. There are more code examples here than you could poke a stick at, which when you are prepping yourself to do an exam or even just using the book to learn from it is an excellent thing to have handy. If you've ever searched the web looking for a tidy piece of code to solve a problem and you waste a ton of time looking for it. This book, is definitely a great resource. Every code slice has a C# and a Visual Basic example, which makes it really useful when you're not sure on one of those languages. I found it to be extremely useful as my knowledge of VB is pretty limited, but with the C# code next to it. Easy stuff.

As a side note, some of the pages where still stuck together on the book...so a few seconds of separating the pages and away I went in my search missing knowledge, you know I like that there are books with so much information in them, you know you're going to have to read them a few times just to get the full benefit out of it.  The book is a good read, and it is impressive with the knowledge it contains. Here's some info from the e-book version you get on the disc.... Did I mention the disc, nope, ok, you get a disc with it, e-book, examples, labs 60 Day trial software (Go to www.dreamspark.com to get full versions my fellow students)..ok where was I... oh yeah:

Intended Audience

This book was created for software developers who need to design, plan, implement and support Web applications or who plan to take the related Microsoft Certified Professional exams:

• Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (Exam 70-305).

• Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (Exam 70-315).

Prerequisites

This course requires that students meet the prerequisites that follow.

• Be able to create Windows applications using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET in either the Visual Basic .NET or Visual C# .NET programming language.

• Have a basic understanding of the object-oriented programming concepts including classes, properties, methods, and events.

• Understand the fundamental elements in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) used to author Web content.

• Understand how Web content is stored and accessed over the Internet. This includes being able to explain the roles of Web servers, Internet protocols, and Web clients (such as browsers).

About the CD-ROM

The Supplemental Course Materials CD-ROM contains a variety of informational aids that may be used throughout this book:

• eBook.

  A complete electronic version (eBook) of this training kit.

• Lesson samples.

  Most lessons in this training kit include sample Web forms and other files that demonstrate the code shown in the training kit. These samples are organized into two Visual Studio solutions named MCSDWebAppsVB, for the Visual Basic .NET samples, and MCSDWebAppsCS, for the Visual C# samples.

• Completed labs.

  Each chapter in this training kit concludes with a lab containing a series of exercises that reinforce the skills you learned. Completed versions of these applications are included in the chapter folders of the MCSDWebAppsVB and MCSDWebAppsCS solutions so that you can compare your results. You can also use these completed applications as a reference if you get stuck while completing an exercise.

• Required files.

  Practice files, such as sample databases, that are required to perform the hands-on procedures. You should use these files when indicated in the exercises.

• Sample exam questions.

  To practice taking a certification exam, you can use the sample exam installed by the CD-ROM. The sample questions help you assess your understanding of the materials presented in this book.

Here's a chapter List:

1. Intro to Web Programming
2. Creating Web Forms Applications
3. Working with Web Objects
4. Creating a User Interface
5. Storing and Retrieving Data with ADO.NET
6. Catching and Correcting Errors
7. Advanced Web Forms Programming
8. Maintaining Security
9. Building and Deploying Web Applications
10. Testing Web Applications
11. Creating Custom Web Controls
12. Optimising Web Applications with Caching
13. Formatting Web Application Output
14. Providing Help
15. Globalizing Web Applications

So as you can see a pretty in-depth set of information, of which I can only say I am benefiting quite a bit from it all.  So if you get the chance and want to sit the exam to get a Microsoft Qualification, this is a good choice.

Each chapter is broken down into lessons, a summary, a review and a lab exercise. All in all its good stuff.

Till next time...Keep on learning.