70-536 and everything after...

I'm writing this at work...feeling good...work's under control, my headphones are on...TMS...1st day of the 1st test, Lord's - England Vs India - England are batting, 225/2. Geoff Boycott's laying into Andrew Strauss, who has just fallen. I love Geoffrey Boycott...

OK. Now for the science bit (courtesy of MSDN):

The following list includes the topic areas covered on this exam. The percentage indicates the portion of the exam that addresses a particular skill.
•
Developing applications that use system types and collections (15 percent)
•
Implementing service processes, threading, and application domains in a .NET Framework application (11 percent)
•
Embedding configuration, diagnostic, management, and installation features into a .NET Framework application (14 percent)
•
Implementing serialization and input/output functionality in a .NET Framework application (18 percent)
•
Improving the security of the .NET Framework applications by using the .NET Framework 2.0 security features (20 percent)
•
Implementing interoperability, reflection, and mailing functionality in a .NET Framework application (11 percent)
•
Implementing globalization, drawing, and text manipulation functionality in a .NET Framework application (11 percent)

This is pretty clear, and I'll use the attached percentages to divvy up my effort. So based on a (maximum of) 2 months to cover this syllabus, I'll...well...you can do the maths yourself.

Also I've ordered a few books:

http://amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/0735622779/ref=s9_asin_image_3-2259_g1/202-8371832-7578263?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=12BJF7MXNZ4C67NYW1KR&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=139042191&pf_rd_i=468294
http://amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/0764578472/ref=s9_asin_image_1-2259_g1/202-8371832-7578263?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=1WP63H8EZH83BTCGGFYE&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=139042191&pf_rd_i=468294
http://amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/1590595890/ref=s9_asin_image_1-2259_g1/202-8371832-7578263?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=07KEWJYGJB8HXWN2G908&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=139046091&pf_rd_i=468294

The first one is the recommended MS Press text, which has got pretty good write-ups. The other two are deliberately not from the Microsoft List - my team leader, Ben, sensibly suggested that getting a non-Microsoft view of their technology often reveals things which you wouldn't get from the party mouthpiece.

Well I've changed one thing already - there's no way I can achieve this within a year. I spoke to a guy on my team, Sachin, who has 'previous' re. all this, and whilst he managed a staggering 5 exams in 9 months, he was putting in on average 30 hours study a week. I couldn't, and nor would I want to, commit this much of my time to this venture. Farah my wife would divorce me or kill me (or both), and besides which, there has to be time for the finer things in life like playing squash, and sitting down and having a cup of tea, whilst watching someone else sit down and have a cup of tea (aka Big Brother). Instead I'm gonna pitch myself at 10-hours a week - 1.5hrs per weekday, and 2.5 hrs over the weekend. At that rate I reckon I'll be good for an exam every 3 months - I'll plan for that anyway. I thinking 2 months to cover a syllabus, and one month exam prep. Let the games begin...

Ground Zero.

Right. My mission, should I chose to accept, (which I have), is to obtain an MCPD from scratch, within 18 months. Fleshing that out a bit, I intend on taking the following exams in the following order:

70-536 (Application Development Foundation),
70-526 (Windows Dev),
70-528 (Web Dev),
70-529 (Distributed Apps Dev), and then finally the PRO exam...
70-549 (Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications).

Oh, and there'll (probably) be one for the road:

70-445 (Sql Server 2005 Business Intelligence)

So that's 6 exams to study for and pass...today's 19th July, 2007...is it realistic to have successfully completed all this by Christmas 2008? Truth is, I don't know. I'd like to think so, and I'll start out planning accordingly, but...