DC Housing Market versus 70-320
This weekend we purchased a condo in the Washington DC area and I passed the Microsoft 70-320 exam (”Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework”). The natural question for any techie then would be: which was harder?
Let’s weigh up the contenders:
DC House Purchase
- Compete with at least 10 other bidders on any property
- Pay $50k+ more than asking price
- Waive all contingencies in your offer (inspection, financing, appraisal)
- Sweat it out and possibly still not even come close
70-320 Preparation
- Learn a lot about COM Interop, COM+ and Enterprise Services
- Delve into security permissions, roles and wonderwhich of our clients would ever be satisfiedwith’off the shelf’security
- Reading up on .NET Remoting intricacies that make yourbrain hurt
- Find out that SOAP extensions are pretty common and are basically required reading for this exam - so much for thinking we were so smart!
I used this bookfor my preparationand spent some time doing the practice exams that come with the accompanying CD.
Discussion
The exam was difficult since it tests some things thatI just don’t use in my day to day work - we seldom work with COM or COM+. The level of questions in this exam also seemed much higher than 70-315 and there were some trick questions.However, the examinersstill need to focus more on the understanding of concepts and how people apply knowledge rather than specifics. I don’t see the value in testing whetheryou know the name of a particular methodwithina class.
The winner
I think the house purchase was harder dueto the emotional rollercoaster involved since the outcome affects your life for the next 7 years (US average?) but the exam was a worthy adversary especially on the same weekend! 
Comments
One Response to “DC Housing Market versus 70-320”
Leave a Reply
“… affects your life for the next 7 years (US average?)”
Is there an impending calamity that will kill most of us in, on average, 7 years or are you just much older than your picture portrays?