MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation

It's a good book. The topics, the examples, and the Tips are very usefull. If you really want to know about WCF this is the rigth choice.

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.

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.