Exam 71-516: Accessing Data with Microsoft .NET Framework 4

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

I had the chance to take the beta version of exam 71-516 today. Here are my thoughts on it: first, I was rather annoyed to discover that I will only know if I passed or not about 8 weeks after the beta period expires (July, 02), which probably means September. It was a difficult exam, especially since I don't have any practice on some of the new Entity Framework options. The items covered, from the most covered to the least covered, were:

Entity Framework (50-50 for POCO/Non-POCO)
LINQ to SQL
WCF Data Services
Classic ADO.NET (DataSets, DataTables, DataAdapters, TableAdapters, Connections and Commands
LINQ to XML
Sync Framework (surprise!)

All added up, I think it was a difficult exam. My advise is that you practice a lot! I will post the result as soon as I know it.

6 Comments

Thanks for your post. I will take exam on 26 April.

Can I ask about about the number of questions ?

Which type of questions there are about Sync Framework ?

Thanks you.

Salvo.

Blackat.NET - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 4:24:09 PM

Blackat.NET:
85 questions, 240 minutes.
There was only one question about Sync Framework. If I recall, it had to do with the value for the synchronization direction (Download, Upload, Bidirectional, etc.

Ricardo Peres - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 4:37:42 PM

Oh, well! I was supposing that there are 150 questions!

Ok, thank you and good luck for the exame result. ;-)

Blackat.NET - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 4:51:35 PM

I hope you did well. I personally am not a fan of the certification examinations. They always seem to a lag behind the .NET versions and companies are not demanding them. The cheating scandal and inability of the tests to measure actual-skill-level did not help their cause. It would be nice if there was a Software Licence (like what Mechanical engineers have) that is pretty standard and focuses on core-fundamentals.

Phil - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 11:30:46 PM