As usual, I procastinated this news. A few weeks ago, on October 10th, 2009, I passed the Microsoft 70-562 exam towards the MCTS certification. I am now officially Microsoft Certified on ASP.NET 3.5. I wanted to share a bit about my testing experience.
I had bought the training kit for Microsoft, "MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit Exam 70-562" and read it for the most part. The book was a good read, but extremly simple, mainly if you have been developing applications for ASP.NET for some time like me; you will definitely find yourself right at home. However, I felt there were some topics shallowed covered and I needed more than that, specially around assembly security. After googling it a bit, I read some comments from other developers expressing the same insight, the book was not enough to cover the advanced concepts needed for the test. That's when I invested a bit more on a practice test from measure up. I soon realized I was on the right path. Some topics covered on the practice test were barely mentioned on the Training Kit, mostly WCF services, client ASP.NET AJAX development which were subjects I felt I needed some review. I don't know why Microsoft did it this way; I can say that thanks to the practice test and not to the Training Kit, I could close the gap on those framework areas I felt weak on and I passed the test.
After a month of preparation using both sources, I can certainly say that I have mastered the .NET framework in the ASP.NET area. Hope it can be useful for my future endeavors.
All in all, I am very happy with the result, and even thought I know for the fact that for many this is not that valuable, for me it represents a milestone for all other future goals ahead.