I just completed the latest Microsoft Beta exam 71-316 and I now know I should have looked at the title of the exam, Development and Implementation of Windows-base Applications with C# and .NET Framework. This exam is jam packed with WinForm based questions, something I know little about. The exam I took covered areas such as security, configuration (gotta love those wonderful .config files), application packaging and deployment, Windows Form application development, debugging, setting up application menu and help systems, implementing custom controls, ADO.NET (both SqlClient and OleDb manager providers, connection and command objects, DataSet, DataView, data binding, and data editing), and finally XML (through various XML Readers and ADO.NET DataSet).

The questions were not as technically challenging as I had expected. In my opinion, if you have done WinForm development, you will do fine on this test. So how did I do? I suspect I did not do very well as I have done very little WinForm development using Visual Studio.NET and C#. Since this was a beta exam, my actual score will be sent to me in 8 weeks.

Pass or fail, taking the exam served my purpose of preparing for the actual release exam due out later this year. I now know what to expect from the exam and what I need to study. And my study list does not include the topics I expected today: reflection, delegation and event handling, web services, and web applications.

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