MS Technology Specialist: WSS 3.0 - Application Development

Last Friday, I passed MCTS: WSS 3.0 - Application Development successfully. I’d like to share my experience with this exam in this post.

First of all, it was really hard to prepare myself for the exam because I’ve started to learn and practice WSS 3.0 last December. I’ve passed several Microsoft exams and this one was the most complicated one for me. I suppose that it is because I have a good theoretical knowledge but I have not enough practice with WSS 3.0.

What have I seen on the exam? First of all, I was a bit surprised when I’ve read that the exam includes several questions that are not scored and they are for test purposes of the MS exam improvement. Actually, I cannot remember about such questions in the exams that I’ve passed in the past. In any case if you are prepared good enough it will not be a problem. [Update - a friend of mine Martin Karaivanov told me that there are also such questions in other MS exams.] The second thing was a question(s) about Records Repository Web Service. I cannot say that I was surprised because I read in the Internet that such questions may appear but as you may know Records Repository Web Service is more like a part of MOSS 2007 than a part of WSS 3.0. Most of the questions of the exam were connected with WSS 3.0 Object Model, Features, Definitions, Solutions, Web Parts and how to install them, custom controls, custom list columns, custom content types, etc. You also should have some knowledge of stsadm.exe and a very good knowledge of CAML.

How did I prepare myself? I’ve used only information from the Internet including on-line training, videos and tutorials  and some of the books recommended by Microsoft on their page of Preparation Guide for Exam 70-541. You can find some Internet resources in my previous posts in WSS category. A very important part of my preparation was that I was practice myself in the use of WSS 3.0 Object Model, Web Services, configuring WSS 3.0 via Object Model and Administrative Web Site and learning and practicing CAML.