McSd Visual Basic 6 Desktop Applications Study Guide: Exam 70-176

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Summary: Why wouldn't you drop the $40????
Review: I'm taking the exam next week and this was the only book that I was able to get my hands on to prepare for the exam. If there's anything else out there I sure couldn't find it on amazon or anywhere else. It covers all of the exam objectives and seems to be written exactly to the MS course outline. This is my first certification exam so I don't have much experience with preparing, but I would recommend this guide.

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Summary: I thought the questions were fine and the book was excellent
Review: The questions in this book are what you'd expect them to be. They're drills to see if you absorbed the chapter material. I've taken the beta exam and I can tell you for certain that the authors know what's on that exam. Don't take it without reading the book.

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Summary: Database and COM heavy with good excercise
Review: The SQL and COM stuff here is good with a lot of excercises. Overall the books is heavy on database apps. Wizards, packaging and all the other cools InterDev/VB 6 stuff is extensive. I'd reccomend this if you're planning on taking the exam soon. Besides, there's nothing else out

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Summary: FOR EXAM PREP ONLY
Review: IT's totally the Microsoft party line on VB programming. I would only use this for exam study, then put it away for real VB programming.

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Summary: Very good, I shouldn't have paid for a course
Review: This was a very comprehensive book. I had taken the course and the book covers some things that weren't in the course, especially some of the more advanced COM topics. Not much intro coverage---so this isn't for first time VB programmers, but neither is the exam.

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Summary: Worth the money
Review: Gets to the core issues of this course and exams, which is how to accesses data from a database and use COM. Good ActiveX control examples and the self test on cd was helpful. There are a lot of practice questions at the end of the chapters.

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Summary: This is a book I would recommend to my co-workers
Review: Excellent coverage of how to compile a project with class modules into a COM component how to set properties to control the instancing of a class within a COM component. Could have been stronger in Explaining how to handle errors using ADO. Very good index and well organized around the exam objectives

Rating:
Summary: One fine book
Review: This book was a real helpful tool for studying for my exam, a real aid for work, and I could not get by without it. The test questions and answers were a real help -- always accurate, and was a must for the exam. It was written in a language that I could understand and the occassional humor helped to relax my mind. Much better than the other books on this topic.

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Summary: Have we ever heard of Quality Assurance??
Review: Wow! All I can say is wow. I've never, ever read a exam guide with such an incredibly poor set of exam test questions. The first chapter's exam questions were so incredibly poorly worded and, well, incorrect, that I had to put the book down and scream. For example, question 13 asks "you have not specified a help file for a command button...What will occur if you press F1?" The "correct" answer is "A. No help will be displayed. The standard Help topic for command buttons will be displayed." Okay, so the first half of that answer is correct, but the second half DIRECTLY contradicts it. Also, it doesn't specify whether you are in design mode or run mode, which makes a BIG difference. Of the 20 in this section, I'd say 10 had problems like this. I skimmed through the content of the rest of the book and can only say that it is hardly worth the paper that it is written on. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU LIKE WASTING A LOT OF TIME AND MONEY.

Rating:
Summary: Text generally good, but sample questions poor.
Review: This book organizes the examination objectives fairly well, and the text is quite readable and reasonably accurate. However, a major part of the learning experience rests in determining which of the "correct" answers in the back of the book are actually correct, and which are not. The questions tend to be poorly worded, and about 15% of the "correct" answers are wrong in some way. Despite its shortcomings, I find the book useful for review purposes, and worth the amazon.com price.