70-504 – Microsoft Certification Exam Preparation Guide I

This post is in sequel to earlier post –70-504 – Microsoft Certification Exam

One full winter has past and its summer again since my last post on 70-504 exam. During this period lot happened, like we saw few millions new posts on workflow foundation forum, heard lot of interesting talks on Mix’08 conference, read news of 70-504 finally launching, and not to forget we observed (and still doing) interesting and never-ending Obama vs. Clinton duel, though that is not our subject today. What I will be talking today will be primarily focused on how to prepare for 70-504 exam. I will not be providing any cheat sheets, instead it will be based totally on analysis of exam material, composition of each part of exam and pointing towards best available resources for preparations.

Okay, so here we go. Following is chart of composition of question in exams. Data for this is fetched from official site of 70-504 Windows Workflow Foundation.

We’ll talk about each section of exam, its short analysis and then I will present few links for further studies.

1. Creating and Hosting Workflows (14%)

With 14% this section is one of smaller sections of exam and basically it has questions on workflow creation and hosting only. Microsoft says it evaluates following skills in this section

• – Create state machine workflows.
• – Create sequential workflows.
• – Select workflow authoring mode.
• – Host a workflow and designer in an application.
• – Initialize and manage the workflow life cycle.
• – Modify a workflow at runtime.

Every good workflow foundation book has workflows, types of workflows, how-to-create-them, how-it-runs stuff in first chapter, so any candidate having some experience of working on workflow foundation, has pretty decent idea about workflow creation, workflow runtime and its execution cycle. Hosting is another important aspect of workflow application and bit of studying/using it can polish your skills for questions related to this topic. I personally rate these 14% weightage questions as easy ones.

Links for preparation

http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/wf/WindowsWorkflowFoundationPart1.aspx

http://aliwriteshere.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/5/

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WF/JumpStartWF.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WF/Hostingwwf.aspx

1. Communicating with Workflows (23%)

Second biggest share of questions come from this topic. What is it about? Actually workflow within an application don’t run in isolation, instead often they need to talk to method outside workflow, or raise an event when workflow reaches certain state, or communicate with a web service or expose itself as a web service depending on scenario. This is precisely what this section is about. I personally believe one should have idea of web services (even basic level) before studying this section, and trust me, this is very easily achievable, then one need to learn about different ‘activities’ that are used for communication by workflows, do particularly look at their events, methods and properties. Difficulty level: Medium

Links for preparation

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid26_gci1204115,00.html

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733602(VS.85).aspx

http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/wf/WindowsWorkflowFoundationPart2.aspx

So far so good, rest of sections listed below will be analyzed in subsequent posts, its really late here so lets call it a day. See you soon again, your comments are most welcome

1. Creating and Configuring Custom Activities (25%)
2. Applying Rules and Conditions (13%)
3. Managing Transactions and Compensations (13%)
4. Creating and Managing Runtime Services (12%)

70-504 – Microsoft Certification Exam on Windows Worflow Foundation

This post now has sequel here on preparations for 70-504

Few months before in one quiet boring evening, I was checking my emails when I saw one from LionBridge; inviting me to be part of a team working on preparing new exam on Windows Workflow Foundation for Microsoft!…. moment I read the email, I knew boring moments have ended and following months are going to be fun, and trust me they were! I worked with few amazing guys at LionBridge, a company with an impressive profile, works on lots of different areas of computing, one of which is to provide certification exam material to companies like Microsoft. I wrote items for new exam, which were evaluated for Microsoft’s defined standards by LionBridge, this was followed by lots of discussion and eventual approval of them.

Having signed NDA with LionBridge, I cannot comment on anything related to exam, not even harmless details (like how many areas of Workflow Foundation will exam cover) which everyone one would know once exam get announced by Microsoft. Rather, I would like to talk about what I felt very strongly about Workflow Foundation (WF) during these last few months of exam preparation.

Unlike its cousins; WPF, WCF, you would have noticed WF didn’t get that big reception from industry yet nor does it create that “sensational” effect in your mind. Its not as sexy as WPF is, and it doesn’t have those buzzwords (communication, web service, etc.) in its pocket like WCF. Still I believe WF is going to change the way we program in much drastic manner, unlike WPF, WCF. I don’t mean to compare three .NET 3.0 technologies, the point I am trying to make is, WF is about how you can make your deep core logic behind applications ‘customizable!’, it gives you power to make such intelligent robust application that Business Analysts or even clients can customize to their needs. It helps you writing batch jobs, services, routine chores in better fashion, and also gives you power to expose your application via web service, or have them executed as desktop application. You can run your ASP.NET web application page-flow workflow on WF, and you can have core business intensive software, designed on WF with its ease of designing, power of customization and liberty of being exposed as web service, called as background service or simply kicked by a desktop program. WPF is only about user interface, WCF is about communication, but WF is going to be backbone of variety of software. THIS is the reason I believe slowly but with its immense power and suite of facilities, WF will penetrate into our industry and change the way we program! ….therefore, I would strongly recommend brushing up your WF skills, and be among the first 100s who would pass 70-504 – Microsoft’s yet-to-be-announced certification exam on Windows Workflow Foundation. Don’t miss chance of putting this jewel on your resume! [One question, that may be asked why was I selected by LionBridge for writing exam? I think this may be because of this blog and/or my articles on Workflow Foundation at CodeProject.com]

This post now has sequel here on preparations for 70-504