Andrew Ellsom said
I started out thinking this was a pretty decent book and then I ran into a problem with the example code not working properly with the built-in host in VS2008. Seeing that they mention this host in the book (eventually) you would have thought that they would have coded the sample code to work with it. I had to resort to a project file hack I found via Google.
Then comes the exam questions. You think you've studied the book and understood it reasonably well and then you get a question which just looks like nothing you've read so you make a guess, get it wrong and the 'explanation' points you to a chapter in the book as a reference. Go to that chapter and there's nothing that covers that question at all!
I don't get how the official study kit could not even prepare you for the practice exam!! I'm now off to read MSDN as it seems a much more comprehensive source for WCF.
I would change my star rating, but Amazon won't let me. This book just left me frustrated.
Wiktor Szoltysek said
Computer Science books usually fall into one of three categories:
1] The truly rare gems , books that you read from beginning to end, they don't feel like a chore to read. I've come across a few such books -"Head First: Design Patterns" is one of them.
2] The books that aren't quite perfect -maybe the content is too dry, or the technical details are a bit off, but all in all , your time is not wasted reading them (or even skimming). You get some use out of it, and you learn something new. Finally, there is the last category.
3] The absolute bottom of the pile, books so bad and in-cohesive, that they leave you furious after having read the garbage in the first place.
After having purchased this book, to study for the 70-503 exam, I can state without a doubt in my mind that this book clearly falls in the 3rd category of books and should be avoided at all costs. There are much better books out there for studying for the WCF exam (even if they aren't official training kits), and as a reference guide this book is useless. Heck, you'd be better off just studying from MSDN. You WILL fail the exam if this book is your only study material.
Large chunks of the book are just copied directly from MSDN, specifically the instrumentation and security chapters. Even the same code examples are copied, as well as the general formatting. You'll be trying to read areas of the book, not understand what the authors are trying to say, go to MSDN for clarification, only to realize that they are the same. Of course, just like a student attempts to avoid getting caught for plagiarism by changing the occasional words, the authors have made the same futile attempts. For example: compare the Performance Counter section on pg 312, with the corresponding article on MSDN. The authors have even decided to copy the full registry key entries, without thinking whether or not they are relevant for the exam -they are not. To make matters worse, when the authors weren't cutting and pasting from MSDN, they were reusing the same text from other areas in the book (for example, duplicate exam tips, pg 362, pg 345, and duplicate tables pg 361, pg 344).
The book is also missing important WCF information such as service contract operator overloading, streaming, serviceKnownTypes, onserializing, releaseContextMode, IErrorHandler, etc. These are good to know items for the exam, and any solid WCF reference book should include them. Even exam objectives that are stated to be in the book (in the tear-out section), are missing. For example "Manage consistency between life cycles, sessions, concurrency, and bindings" is missing from Chapter 2, Lesson 2. The authors also seem to have avoided important issues such as the default InstanceContextMode (it's PerSession), and mentioning that the Light Weight Transaction Protocol isn't supported by ANY binding.
Missing content would have been somewhat justifiable if there simply was no more room in the book to put it in, however instead the authors have filled the book with bloat, tons of it. Pointless exercises, overly verbose labs, condescending requirements, and useless practice questions. Does every chapter need to be prepended with the requirements, and that you require Visual Studio 2008 to read this chapter. Why do the authors insist on telling readers that they require 384megs of RAM and a 1024x768 screen? The WCF 70-503 is not a beginner exam, it's a given that users taking this exam will know how to use a computer and install/use Visual Studio. The sample exam questions were a poor emulation of the actual exam questions. The bundled CD offers no extra practice questions, instead it's just a repeat of the questions in the book. In fact, the bundled CD's (2 of them), offer nothing new to the book, and should not have been included -the Visual Studio trial can just be downloaded from Microsoft's website. Other bloat includes pointless tables that just fill space, i.e. Algorithm Suites and Distinguishing Values on pg 346, -don't worry you don't need to memorize it for the actual exam.
If you are serious about taking the exam, or you are looking for a good WCF reference book, I recommend reading "Programming WCF Services" by Juval Lowy instead. I fail to see how anyone could give this WCF training kit book a review of more than one star. Compare the two books and you will see that I mean, it's that clear cut. What a difference it makes, when the author actually knows what he's talking about.
Michael J. Mcmahon Jr. said
This book is quite sufficient in preparing its readers for the associated exam. The materials covered in the first half of the book provide the basics for most WCF interactions and applications. The last half delves into security, transactions, and instancing, amongst other details.
The material itself is well-presented, though some of the forward references make it hard to tie certain aspects together (e.g. message header security with attributes). However, 2 passes through the book should be sufficient to prepare any reader for the test. This was the only study material used (in conjunction with the provided test exams) and I passed the test the first time though.
The test exams are worth a bit of note, as they are not terribly connected to the book material. More than a few of the questions will touch on topics that are not in the book. Moreover, the exam answers will reference chapters in the book that are either different or do not exist. There seems to be a good bit of disconnect between the exam manufacturer and the authors. However, the book itself contains relatively few errors that will cause any problems.
The reason these errors do not affect my rating of the book is that in researching and learning about these other topics, I feel I got a more well-rounded WCF education and that it better-prepared me for the test. Some of these tangents, like the WebServiceHost, COM+, and some other attributes, proved very useful. The additional information made clearer the links between WCF and various other technologies.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. This should be the only resource needed to pass the exam, and it is quite well-written.
Guy Incognito said
Without any previous WCF experience, I passed the exam using only this book and the accompanying practice exam. I have taken many of the .NET 2.0 certification exams and this book is much better in general quality than the 2.0 study guides. On the downside, some of the examples require Vista, but you can still learn the material without running those examples. Also, there was a little bit of material on the exam that wasn't covered but not enough to be a problem. My advice - read and understand the material, work through the examples, and take the practice exam until you consistently achieve a passing score and you will pass the real exam. Besides preparing for the exam, I recommend this book for real-world development and if I ever do any, I will surely use this as a reference.
Of course there is room for improvement, but I give it five stars because it succeeded in preparing me for the exam.
Karsten said
I have read most of the book, and cannot recommend it. The book have been written by several authors, which shows. There is not a clear thread throughout the book, often things are repeated and explained twice. The book also have a good share of errors, but no errata seems to be available.
Two many times the book doesn't provide an good overview of a topic. In my opinion it focused too little on the why, and too much on the how.
Some of the chapters, especially the security chapters looks like something that have been copy-pasted from MSDN.
Overall the book might be decent, but there surely are better books than this if you want to actually understand WCF and use after you have passed the exam.
Which I'm sure this book might help with. But the only reason I would want to recommend somebody to buy this book, is to get a feeling for the questions you can expect at the exam from the included cd.
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