Microsoft certification guides seem abysmal.

Question

I'm a programmer. I've set a goal to begin studying for the new .NET exams that are due next month, and I also thought I'd study for SQL too since most of the work I've been doing recently is ASP.NET with SQL, and it'd be incredibly useful to know more about it.

The problem I have is with the books. They are specifically written for the exams, published by Microsoft Press. However I am finding that they are simply terrible. For example, the SQL book I'm currently working through might have a chapter about configuring where your database stores the various files it needs to work. It'll appear in the book as "Use this command to change where files are stored: " without any explanation of the parameters, what else it does, or how it even works. As it's written in the book, it doesn't even work. This is my first complaint. I don't mind supplementing studies with online research, but the book should at least give you a foundation for the topics it teaches, and then say for more information, look at MSDN or google. The book seems to be just bits and pieces that the author has come up with.

The second complaint is even more baffling. I get to the end of a chapter on Installing SQL, and there is a knowledge check on the lesson you just did, for the exam - and half the time, the questions are not answered -anywhere- in the lesson. They're not even referenced. Even if you went online and researched around the subject the lesson was telling you about, you'd still not stumble upon the unrelated topic the question is asking.

Before I got into programming, I was working through some of the IT support type courses, and found similar problems.

I don't look forward to the programming set of exams I'm going to be doing next month if the official exam books are the same as this SQL one.

My question is, has anyone else experienced the frustrations I am trying to get certified? Do you have any advice or a solution?

(I hope this question is sufficiently programming related, or at least programmer related.)

Answer 1

This is a very common complaint regarding Microsoft certifications. If you look at the matrix of resources for any given exam, the only single resource you'll find that is marked "contains all necessary study information" are the instructor-led courses.

I personally wouldn't waste any money on books- they tend to be the worst resources. Focus your study on online resources and get sample exams.

Answer 2

Microsoft Press have always had quite a bad reputation for their certification exams, partly because they're too general (the reason you buy a certification book is that you want to pass the exam, obviously it shouldn't only be answers to questions from the exam but the MS books usually wander off into areas that aren't even part of the exam in any way) and partly because they usually have quite a lot errors. I've not looked at any published in the last 8 years or so, but it sounds like they're not getting much better than when I looked at them.

If you can, try to find books from other publishers, they're usually better quality.

It's all quite surprising really since except for certification books I've liked every MS Press book I've bought and usually have a high opinion about them.

The only advice I have if you can't find any better books would be to download any free practice tests for the exams that you can find and not worry too much about the actual Q & A but read through any supporting documenatation the answers points to, they usually point to very good answers (at least in the case of Transcender).