Exam Ref 70-487: Developing Windows Azure and Web Services

This book covers a lot information in a rather organized way to prep you for the 70-487 exam. I have not taken the exam yet but fee confident that I can pass using this book. It is however a dry subject matter, so where some exam prep books are still somewhat easy reads, this one is not.

Like one of the other reviewers here I was extremely unimpressed with this book. I passed the 70-480 & 70-486 on the first try using the same official MS exam ref books. The other two books were extremely well written, this one... not so much. I actually stopped using the practice questions because I found so many where the answer was just plain wrong or was missing entirely from the answer section. There are multiple misspellings and punctuation issues but I haven't even gotten to the worse part. This book is at least 150 pages too long! The author put so much "extra" garbage filler in between the few good tidbits that it made reading it frustrating. The other two books had none of these issues and I highly recommend them for preparing for their respective exams. Pass on this book, you'll thank me later.

First of all, I am only a bit more than half way through the book. There are quite a few mistakes in this book. Some answers are clearly incorrect or missing. For example, p. 248 and 282 (Objective 3.6), there are three questions but only two answers are given. I want to give it more stars but this kind of errors are found through out. The book feels like it was re-arrange last minute and did not get reviewed properly. While some of the authors' thoughts are good, I find most of them to be too general and does not help in the exam or in practice. In addition, many important topics are simply skimmed over, such as in the WCF chapter. Many of the bindings options were not clearly explained. While I am learning something from this book, and I understand compiling a book for exam 70-487 is a difficult task, it simply falls short of my expectation. I have seen better exam prep from Microsoft (I have read a dozen of them). If the second half of the book somehow changes my mind, I will update this review. [Updated on 3/27/2014] I took my exam and passed it. It wasn't easy but I made it, so I want to give this book some credits and update my review, now that I have read it cover to cover twice. I am bumping it up from 2 to 3 stars, and here is why. First of all, I am quite familiar with MS data access technologies and WCF from using them at work for years. Exam (70-487) truly covers an insane range of topics that can only be sufficiently covered by a book of at least 900-1100 pages. While this book has only some 420 pages and is not expensive (I paid $26 for it), I would rather pay more for a more well-written book. I am sure the authors are restricted by page numbers but many paragraphs could have been more succinct. There are many wasted space and general comments that don't aid in the exam, although I find the 2 or 3 review questions at the end of each objective very helpful. I read this book cover to cover twice, viewed online videos (Microsoft virtual academy), read some web references, and watched a few PluralSight training videos. I also had a lot of hands-on practice on my PC (coding in VS2013 express) and playing around in Azure. While this is the only 70-487 book, one has to be extremely proficient with the topics in order to pass it by reading this book alone. To make matter worse, Azure is ever evolving, so much that this book, Microsoft web site, or the exam itself can't even keep up. We are already on VS2013 and Entity Framework is on version 6.1 today... An exam question was still using ObjectContext as opposed to the new DbContext. Overall, I would give the book a 3.5-3.6, knowing how difficult it is to cover exam 70-487. I like the Web API and deployment coverage. Admittedly, WCF deserve its own book (I have other WCF books). I have passed two MCSD certifications in the last 15 years (each requiring 4 exams) but I have to say 70-487 is one of the toughest ones (right up there with the old Windows Architecture I & II many years ago, but with even more evolving topics to cover).

The book gives a good understanding of the topics covered by the exam. Also points out which areas should be given focus and which only need a general understanding. Also points out best practices and helpfull tips for real life application. 11/10 would use again.

Book covered material relevant to the test and in a fashion that was helpful. The author knew his material well.

This book was published without any revision or proof-reading. Sentence structure throughout is terrible, and the book reads like a series of random, fragmented, statements. The book is riddled with: - mistakes - extremely verbose nonsense unrelated to the material - first person pronoun usage (from the perspective of any one of the three separate authors) - grammatically flawed language - a constant stream of indeterminate prepositions and indexicals - more text about the author's feelings and emotions than the target material - ill-formatted code samples - and plain bad advice The fact that this book was published at all, is criminal. If you expect this book to help you pass certification ... then god help you, because you will need ten times more effort than ought to be required. The following image is a page with some revision markings: axiommanifold.com/media/images/487-Amazon-Review/bad-487-eg-1.jpg To point out one thing: the LINQ-to-XML sections opens with three paragraphs repeating the same point over and over. Note the first (two) sentence/s of the second paragraph: "There's one point that can't be emphasized enough. The more you know about the technology, the more likely you are to be able to rule out incorrect answers." It is this kind of language treatment that renders this book a complete scandal. Look at some of the other self-explanatory revision markings. Another example: axiommanifold.com/media/images/487-Amazon-Review/bad-487-eg-2.jpg Note the ill-formatted XML verging on the illegible! Poor formatting like this is rife throughout the book. The authors may have strived to convey valuable information, so the book was potentially a valuable contribution. But the author's laziness or the publisher's stupidity has resulted in complete failure. Microsoft should have been bigger than this, to allow something potentially worthy, to pass into existence without revision and allow this rubbish to reach the market. Microsoft's failure to remove this book from availability is also criminal. ... I don't like this book

The book is not well formatted, some titles are missing that will make you don't understand what the text is about. Some paragraphs are repeated with no reason.

As other reviewers have said, this is a poorly written book and should be avoided. I bought the Microsoft Press Books for 70-480 and they were not good so I vowed to never buy another Microsoft Press book. I passed using the Jumpstart video, online articles, etc. For 70-486 I used the Pro MVC 5 book, the Jumpstart video, some Plural Sight videos, and online articles and passed. For 70-487, there is no other book, so I reluctantly bought this one. I just started reading the book and can already tell that all of the bad reviewer's comments are spot on. I doubt this book was written by a native English speaker. But even forgiving the awkward prose, the book is full of mistakes, type-o's and errors and is very poorly organized. It is way worse than the books for 70-480 that I bought. I find it hilarious that the MS Press web site doesn't show ANY confirmed errata for this book when I spotted several errors in the first section of the first chapter. I have no confidence in the book and have trouble learning from it, which is disappointing because I really want a good book to help me learn this material. So I'm returning it and will rely on online videos, articles on the web, etc to prepare for this exam. I may try to find a good WCF and EF book to help as well, but not from MS Press. I will never buy another Microsoft Press book again.

I bought this to prepare for my Microsoft certification. Covers all aspects of the 70-487 exams. Recommended

Whoever preparing for the 70-487 exam should prepare more in Azure which is not covered in this material. But good otherwise..

Awesome recap for the exam

This book is an exam prep book. I have not written the exam so I am reviewing based on learning the topics covered in the book. The topics are current, relevant and interesting - Azure, WCF, Web API etc. My main problem with the book is that it covers the topics in a superficial manner - 3 ways to do something or 5 config options without really explaining the purpose of the values or why you would use them. I found myself constantly going to the internet for a better coverage of many of the topics. The author also adds some unusual non-technical comments (not a problem just not very relevant or humorous) and many points are mentioned multiple times as if the material was pieced together from different sources. I have previously been certified for a number of MS certifications (including MCSE and MCAD) so I am not discounting the value of the exam prep materials, just that the book could have covered the exam topics and be much more practical at educating the reader at the same time.

I'm about half way through this book at the moment and it's the most frustrating study book I have every purchased (Yes it's even worse than the 70-480 exam reference for errors and that was atrocious). I am constantly having to refer to the books errata online and this has only got unconfirmed submissions from users of the book. The question and answer sections quite often don't match up so I'm left wondering what the correct answers are for some sections and some of the questions are incredibly badly worded and then inconstant with the explanations given for the answers that are marked correct. Even worse some questions are about subjects that are not even explained until a chapter later! I'm will continue working through this book but I have no faith in it other than a primer for what I actually need to study in more detail. The authors and publishers should be ashamed of themselves for this book.