Rating: 
Summary: very good
Review: I used this book almost exclusively to pass the exam yesterday. The most important thing to know is that if you studied for and passed 70-315 or 70-316, and then you study this book, you should have no problem passing the 70-320 exam.A strong understanding of ADO.NET is a prerequisite, because this book does not review everything about ADO.NET that you'll need to know for the exam (but if you studied well for either 70-315 and 70-316, you should be fine). Of the new material, it is most important to have a detailed knowledge of .NET remoting and web services, including implementation, configuration, versioning, and security. This book goes into significant detail on these topics, and this is exactly what you need. There are a couple things missing, notably among security issues for web services, but this still should not significantly weaken your ability to pass the exam with just this book. It is also important to be knowledgeable of the COM+ and the XML classes, and these are covered well too. For COM+, the authors take the time to do it right, explaining the concepts clearly, and giving plenty of tools (such as simplified tables of attributes and class members) to get you familiar with implementation and configuration details. As far as the topics of testing, debugging, deployment, and security go, Kalani has re-used a lot of his text from his prior Training Guide books. Much of it is therefore of a general nature which is a pre-requisite for the exam, but the exam focuses more on these issues as they directly involve the new technologies: .NET remoting, web services, XML, windows services, and COM+. It is important to know the details of how to configure all of these technologies, I think this is the biggest challenge of this material and of the exam. The book mostly covers these topics well, although there is a little bit of an unnatural split-up of material between the technology chapters and the deployment and security chapters. Also, I think the coverage of security for web services is insufficient, so hitting the documentation on that topic wouldn't be a bad idea. I do not think the book is too verbose: throughout this whole series, Kalani certainly is not one to waste a paragraph saying what should only take a sentence, as some authors do. The writing is both concise and highly readable. But it is true that there is some "101" stuff covered about debugging and code access security, etc., as I said. For the main technologies, the rate of information is very good, I do not see that you could find much fat to trim in the text. Now some people do not like simplistic, hand-holding labs, but these excellent examples have no frills, they are very concise and have little irrelevant code, so I found them very easy to digest very quickly. It is also good to see the important attributes and methods used in multiple labs, as this reinforces how and where to use them. The exercises at the end of each chapter are important, because sometimes they make a point not covered in the text. And the chapter study questions are indispensable for highlighting key points, and whether or not they have sunk into your brain yet. In fact, the answers to the study questions are a more valuable review of the chapter than is the official chapter review blurb. I notice now that the same author has an Exam Cram book on the same topic. You may want to consider that book, but I suspect that a book half as long will just be that much harder and slower to study than this book is.
Rating:
Summary: very good
Review: I used this book almost exclusively to pass the exam yesterday. The most important thing to know is that if you studied for and passed 70-315 or 70-316, and then you study this book, you should have no problem passing the 70-320 exam. A strong understanding of ADO.NET is a prerequisite, because this book does not review everything about ADO.NET that you'll need to know for the exam (but if you studied well for either 70-315 and 70-316, you should be fine). Of the new material, it is most important to have a detailed knowledge of .NET remoting and web services, including implementation, configuration, versioning, and security. This book goes into significant detail on these topics, and this is exactly what you need. There are a couple things missing, notably among security issues for web services, but this still should not significantly weaken your ability to pass the exam with just this book. It is also important to be knowledgeable of the COM+ and the XML classes, and these are covered well too. For COM+, the authors take the time to do it right, explaining the concepts clearly, and giving plenty of tools (such as simplified tables of attributes and class members) to get you familiar with implementation and configuration details. As far as the topics of testing, debugging, deployment, and security go, Kalani has re-used a lot of his text from his prior Training Guide books. Much of it is therefore of a general nature which is a pre-requisite for the exam, but the exam focuses more on these issues as they directly involve the new technologies: .NET remoting, web services, XML, windows services, and COM+. It is important to know the details of how to configure all of these technologies, I think this is the biggest challenge of this material and of the exam. The book mostly covers these topics well, although there is a little bit of an unnatural split-up of material between the technology chapters and the deployment and security chapters. Also, I think the coverage of security for web services is insufficient, so hitting the documentation on that topic wouldn't be a bad idea. I do not think the book is too verbose: throughout this whole series, Kalani certainly is not one to waste a paragraph saying what should only take a sentence, as some authors do. The writing is both concise and highly readable. But it is true that there is some "101" stuff covered about debugging and code access security, etc., as I said. For the main technologies, the rate of information is very good, I do not see that you could find much fat to trim in the text. Now some people do not like simplistic, hand-holding labs, but these excellent examples have no frills, they are very concise and have little irrelevant code, so I found them very easy to digest very quickly. It is also good to see the important attributes and methods used in multiple labs, as this reinforces how and where to use them. The exercises at the end of each chapter are important, because sometimes they make a point not covered in the text. And the chapter study questions are indispensable for highlighting key points, and whether or not they have sunk into your brain yet. In fact, the answers to the study questions are a more valuable review of the chapter than is the official chapter review blurb. I notice now that the same author has an Exam Cram book on the same topic. You may want to consider that book, but I suspect that a book half as long will just be that much harder and slower to study than this book is.
Rating:
Summary: Recommended
Review: I very much recommend this book for the 70-320 exam. I liked the fact that it only uses one language for the examples etc., which is not the fact with the Microsoft Press book.
The book is well-written with good examples and exercises.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Review: Like another book for exam 70-315 by Amit,this book is also an excellent resource for MCAD and MCSD.NET exams. I passed my MCAD.NET and MCSD.NET exams. This book provided helpful detail on the exam topics. This book cover good detail on remoting, window services and web services topics.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, easy to read, very relevent, to the point
Review: The book is very useful. It has lots of practical infomration, yet focused on the goals of the exam. This was the only book I used to pass the exam on the first try. Although I did have practical experience as well
Rating:
Summary: Great All Encompassing Book
Review: This book, for just being released, was very well put together. It was divided into the various sections of the 70-320 test, giving you enough information about the current topic. It didn't go more in-depth as if I had hoped it would, but it does prepare you for the exam. I only found a few grammatical & code errors, but overall, it was a well edited book.
Rating:
Summary: Best 70-320 Book
Review: This is the best of the 70-320 certification books. The only quam that I have with it is the graze over ADO.NET. This test is heavy on the ADO questions (just like the others). Make sure that you study the appendix (which is wonderful) and this is the only source that you will need. If you are studying for the test don't give it a second thought...buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent but additional reading required
Review: This is the only book that I studied for 70-320 exam. I passed the test with an excellent score. It is very well written from exam point of view. However, I would suggest test takers to do additional reading in MSDN areas that appeared in the exam and were not sufficiently explored in the book. To name a few:
- Generating DataSet Relational Structure from XML Schema
- Soap Exception Handling
- Securing XML Web Services using ASP.NET
- Securing Serviced Components and Remote Objects
I am not saying that the book isn't good. The author has done an excellent job in covering the vast scope of this exam. As one of the reviewers pointed out that it is impossible to cover everything. If you practice all examples in this book and read above mentioned topics in MSDN, you are pretty much sure to pass the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Works for the test and as a reference
Review: This is the second book by Amit Kalani that I have used to study and pass a certification exam. His thorough examination of topics and well thought out examples and exercises truly illustrate the technology. Even after you pass the test, the book is useful as a reference for your real world work.
I heartily recommend all of Mr. Kalani's certification books.
Rating:
Summary: Good stuff, very thorough, lots of good exercises.
Review: Very thorough with lots of good exercises and code that works. Good mixture of explanations and questions and step by step exercises. One of the better books around in preparing for the exam.
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