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I read this book for the purpose of Exam 70-310 and I was reasonably satisfied with it. I've passed and am an MCAD for .NET now. It has it's share of errors and confusing portions, but they do not outweigh the general usefulness of this book.

The book covers all objectives for the exam, although skimps on details. I learnt more from the labs at the end of the chapters than from the text. The depth of material will perhaps suffice for the exam but will fall short if you try to develop real world applications using this material. This book will not serve as a reference for you after the exam.

It starts off with an overview of .NET Framework, which isn't quite deep but gives a good introduction. The discussion of Windows Services comes next and is quite complete. The book then talks about Serviced Components and .NET Remoting Objects. Both of these sections are not that clear and require supplemental reading. ADO.NET is discussed well, but the discussion about manipulating XML data is again weak. The book ends with 3 chapters on XML Web services which are well written.

The practice test accompanying the book is nothing like the real test, so if you like to take practice tests, you should look elsewhere.

All in all, with all it's peculiarities, I found that it works for the purposes of the exam.

Just like I did with the first two .NET exams, I am reviewing this book after taking the exam. I am pursuing the MCSD.NET to get proficient and comfortable with .NET as I can hardly discipline myself to study it on my own. For that purpose, this book was sufficient. I don't see why it shouldn't work for you as well.

The book starts with a list of requirements for 70-320 and lists which chapters address them. Which is a good idea because it attempts to eliminate some of the discrepancies that I have encountered between what Microsoft lists as requirements, what curriculums and tutorials teach and what is actually tested on the exams. Ideally this list would serve as a checklist for my readiness for the exam but instead I used it to mark what this book covers thoroughly, just enough or poorly.

And there is plenty of poor coverage. The main fallback is that although the book covers most requirements it does not always go in depth. I had to pick up another book for a better idea on COM+. I think ADO.NET was best covered in the guides for Windows and Web Applications. The same applies for Tracing and Debugging. For these topics I found the above-mentioned literature and the MSDN library more effective.

Some chapters provide only a summary of the topic but that seemed to be enough for my exam. For example, XML schema is a huge topic but this book only gives a definition of it, an example and how to validate an XML document against its schema. And on my exam nothing more was expected. The same goes for the chapter on Deployment and Installation.

I liked the chapters on Remoting, XSLT and the Advanced Web Services Programming. The topics themselves are interesting and I felt this book covered them quite well. I liked that the book was full of notes, summaries and chapter reviews. I went through them one hour before the exam.

The lab for chapter 5 on ADO.NET was cool. You're dealing with a database, you have to deploy two COM+ components, write a remotable object and configure all this via a windows service. Of course, my lab did not work by following the steps in the book. But once I understood the project, I studied all the concepts by themselves and then worked hard to get them to work together. You should practice such combinations! For e.g. calling one web service from another, writing SOAP extensions and using an XSD to validate the messages or trace them to the event log, etc.

Most other labs were satisfactory. I got more disappointed the more code the labs asked me to copy and paste and the less they explained what the code does and how it is written. I had to break down such code by myself.

Unlike the Web Applications guide, the sample tests in this book can be paused. I was also glad to see not only radio button questions but also checkbox ones too, just like in the real exam. Most questions do reinforce the lessons and labs; some however were just too simple and should have been combined with others or omitted altogether. The question that asks the URL to generate the WSDL for a web service is an example.

I took the sample exam without pausing and I failed miserably. Then I reviewed and practiced on the topics and tried again. I also took the exam with the book in my hand and paused after every question and researched the topic to find the answer. Finally, by the fifth time I passed the exam every time.

I am surprised by the reviews for this book. The other MCAD 70-320 study guide by Kalani had overwhelmingly good reviews so I bought that initially instead of this one. True, Kalani's book was more verbose but that is where it bogged down. Everything had an exercise and trying to review a layout of features is difficult. The other book would be good for someone who was starting from scratch and did not know the subject material at all.
Okay, enough about the other book. Like other MS Press MCAD study books, this one is almost in elaborated outline. But surprisingly that fits my study habits. I learn the material from practice either from daily job work, MSDN walkthroughs or other books. When I am ready for studying for the test, I use this book and then if I don't understand something I use MSDN or the other books to reinforce the material. The thing I like about this book is that it has a brief review synopsis all in one place. Is it the end all and be all (silver bullet) for studying for the test? No, you still have to know your material. I also use MeasureUp.com to evaluate myself over the last six weeks before the test, then use their MSDN references and this book to reinforce things I've missed. It has worked for the other two MCAD tests!