MCP

Passed 70-528!

Matthew Podwysocki — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 20:00:00 GMT

With my hectic schedule, I was still able to squeak in an MCP exam recently. I passed the 70-528 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development exam with a 982! Time permitting, I'll post some links that helped me quite a bit with the preparation. I guess I haven't decided yet which exam to take next, but now I have my MCTS - Web Development...

Compression and GZipStream

Matthew Podwysocki — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 17:06:00 GMT

When I was studying for the 70-536 exam, I concentrated heavily on streams as it was a good portion of the exam. One stream that stuck in my mind the most was the GZipStream which encompasses the industry standard for lossless file compression and decompression in the GZip format.

As I always did during the reading process was to whip up little examples of using each technology. I decided to create a little example of how to use the GZipStream in a few lines of code while compressing a known document. I took the C# 2.0 Specification document and compressed it using the GZipStream.

Below is the code I used:

static void Main(string[] args)
{

     // Get bytes from input stream
     FileStream inFileStream = new FileStream(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, "C# Language Specification 2.0.doc"), FileMode.Open);
     byte[] buffer = new byte[inFileStream.Length];
     inFileStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
     inFileStream.Close();

// Create GZip file stream and compress input bytes

     FileStream outFileStream = new FileStream(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, "C# Language Specification 2.0.doc.gzip"), FileMode.Create);
     GZipStream compressedStream = new GZipStream(outFileStream, CompressionMode.Compress);
     compressedStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
     compressedStream.Close();
     outFileStream.Close();
}

As you can see, the code above is very simple. What this does is read in the C# Specification 2.0 doc and get the bytes, then read it in to a new compressed filestream. This creates a file called C# Specification 2.0.doc.gzip.

You can verify the results of the operation, as it reduced the size of the document from 861KB to 271KB. If you open the gzip archive with an appropriate viewer, such as WinRAR, or 7-Zip (my favorite). Once you open it, you will notice that indeed it has the document in there nicely compacted.

Below is a picture of what it should look like:

Like I said above, there really wasn't much to this except for experimentation purposes. There are other examples on MSDN worth looking into such as one located here.

Passed Exam 70-536 - Application Development Foundation

Matthew Podwysocki — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:15:00 GMT

A few days ago, I posted some links for study guides and links for the 70-536 exam. Well, it worked nicely for me as I passed with a 982! I know I missed one question on COM Interop because the way they were talking about returning an HRESULT to a COM caller is not the way I would do it.

I chose the C# version since I've done most of my work in C# so far with Visual Studio 2005, although I could have done the C++ version just as easily. I already have the MCSD and the MCDBA, but I thought I'd try to take most of the exams in the new one instead of just waiting for an upgrade exam.

Anyhow, the following areas should be concentrated on at least from my perspective:

* Streams, streams streams, including GZipStream, SslStream, DeflateStream, MemoryStream

* Encryption and Decryption using MD5, DES, RSA and SHA1

* Generics and Type-Safe Collections

* Threading and Delegates

* Authentication and Authorization using IPrincipal and IIdentity

* AppDomains - dynamic assembly loading and process isolation

* Object serialization in both XML and binary

* Application Troubleshooting and Diagnostics

* IO - Isolated Storage and FileStream security

* COM Interop and P/Invoke

* Security Actions and Permissions (Assert, Demand, LinkDemand, etc)

* Globailization - Culture and Region with string comparing and data formatting

I think that's a pretty good list of what is covered. The list I gave in the previous post should prepare you nicely for it. It's also a good idea to run through MSDN samples of each class listed in the previous post as it gives you the fundamentals needed. Anything else I missed?

Microsoft Certified Architect Program Now Live

Matthew Podwysocki — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:04:00 GMT

In the latest Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, it was announced that after a little delay, that the Microsoft Certified Architect Program (MCAP) has gone live. This program takes those with at least ten years of experience in the architecture field with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft products.

In the first year, they are only announcing 250 slots, so get in line!. To this date, Microsoft has certified 66 and plans to grant 3,000 within the next five to seven years. The cost of this program isn't cheap, as it is a $200 application fee and $10,000 once you are accepted into the program.

According to the article, they are charging the fee because:

Ruth contends that the high fee is "cost recovery," since the program requires bringing together four to six highly qualified architects in a single location several times throughout the board review process. He believes the fee and the high level of experience that candidates must demonstrate will filter out less serious candidates. Ruth said that those who've achieved the MCA so far have upwards of 25 year's worth of experience, with most having 10 to 15 years in an architecting role. "This cannot be for everyone," he added.

The MCAP has three distinct paths.

MCA: Solutions - Solutions architects communicate primarily with business owners within a company and with the technical staff that delivers the solution. The projects they work on affect the enterprise.
MCA: Infrastructure - Communicate mainly with operations managers who are responsible for maintaining the IT environment and end users, and with the engineers that maintain specific areas of the infrastructure.
MCA: Messaging - the first ‘Depth Architect’ program under the Microsoft Certified Architect umbrella, is to build a community of trusted enterprise messaging architects, focused on Microsoft Exchange Server, that are capable of architecting the most complicated messaging solutions in the world.

The official announcement can be found here.

Resources for the 70-536 Certification Exam: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation

Matthew Podwysocki — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:19:00 GMT

As I am studying for the 70-536 exam, I came across this really helpful link that has a lot of reference material linked from the MSDN that contains general topics that will be covered in the exam which can be found here. Mike G. did a really great job!

I'm definitely using this to my advantage in terms of study material. This is not a brain dump, but instead a good study guide that provides links to classes that will be covered as well as several "How-Tos" that will be essential to pass this exam.

There are a few that still need links yet but with a little research on the MSDN, so, I will provide that below:

Send electronic mail to a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server for delivery from a .NET Framework application. (Refer System.Net.Mail namespace)

Format data based on culture information. (Refer System.Globalization namespace)

Access culture and region information within a .NET Framework application.

Format date and time values based on the culture.

DateTimeFormatInfo class

Format number values based on the culture.

Perform culture-sensitive string comparison.

Build a custom culture class based on existing culture and region classes.

Enhance the user interface of a .NET Framework application by using the System.Drawing namespace.

Enhance the user interface of a .NET Framework application by using brushes, pens, colors, and fonts.

Enhance the user interface of a .NET Framework application by using graphics, images, bitmaps, and icons.

Enhance the user interface of a .NET Framework application by using shapes and sizes.

Enhance the text handling capabilities of a .NET Framework application (refer System.Text namespace), and search, modify, and control text within a .NET Framework application by using regular expressions. (Refer System.RegularExpressions namespace)

Decode text by using Decoding classes.

Capture class and CaptureCollection class

.NET Code Access Security for fun and profit

Matthew Podwysocki — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:10:00 GMT

In my coding, I've always been careful about which operations are permitted and which are not. I took a lot of lessons learned when I studied for and passed 70-340 Implementing Security for Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET. Anyhow, I want to run through a few examples of what I have been doing as a best practice. As I go along in time, I'll run through more useful examples and how they apply to the enterprise. Believe me, in the world today, companies are becoming increasingly interested in security.

First, let's start off with some basic authentication. In this first example, we want to make sure that the current user is authenticated in order to create my custom class.

Before anything can begin, we need to make sure that the AppDomain is using WindowsPrincipal, so this code is needed:

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetPrincipalPolicy(PrincipalPolicy.WindowsPrincipal);

Next, we will use attributes to require that the user be authenticated. By using the PrincipalPermissionAttribute class, we can demand that the user be authenticated in order to use this JobManager class.

[PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Authenticated = true)]

public class JobManager

{

...

} // class- JobManager

Let's take this a little further. For example, we need to expose a method to delete a job by an ID, but we need to lock this down to the local Administrators group. Here is how we'd accomplish that task:

[PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Authenticated=true, Role=@"BUILTIN\Administrators")]

public void DeleteJob(Guid id)

{

...

} // method - DeleteJob

There are also some times when using attributes isn't quite enough. In this example, if the enum parameter is set to a particular value, then we must check if the user is a local administrator. This is how we'd accomplish that:

public enum JobOwner

{

CurrentUser,

AllUsers

} // enum - JobOwner

public ReadOnlyCollection<Job> GetJobs(JobOwner owner)

{

// Validate arguments

if(!Enum.IsDefined(typeof(JobOwner), owner))

throw new InvalidEnumArgumentException("owner", (int)owner, typeof(JobOwner));

// Check if owner is set to all users

if (owner == JobOwner.Allusers)

{

// Get current principal

WindowsPrincipal currentPrincipal = (WindowsPrincipal)Thread.CurrentPrincipal;

// Check if part of BUILTIN\Administrators

if (!currentPrincipal.IsInRole(@"BUILTIN\Administrators"))

throw new SecurityException("User must be an administrator of the local machine");

} // if - owner

} // method - GetJobs

So, we've barely scratched the surface, and in the coming days and weeks, I'll go more into what we can with this stuff, so stay tuned...

Studying for the MCPD

Matthew Podwysocki — Mon, 08 May 2006 12:28:00 GMT

I recently joined the ViennaMCSD group which is studying for the MCPD. I got my MCSD a year ago and now in the process of studying to upgrade it. I think this is a pretty worthwhile group if you are interested in studying for the certification in a group setting.

In the future, I should probably look to upgrade my MCDBA as well and even look at the new BizTalk certifications. I see that they still don't have any SharePoint exams at this juncture which I think it interesting.

Passed MCP Exam 70-301

Matthew Podwysocki — Thu, 04 May 2006 21:00:00 GMT

After postponing the exam for so many months, I've decided to finally take the 70-301 Managing, Organizing, and Delivering IT Projects by Using Microsoft Solutions Framework 3.0 exam. Being that I have a background in process and CMMI, I found this exam not to be too hard, but more of common sense when it comes to the project management and risk management areas.

I found the best way to pass is to study the following areas:

Foundation Principles of MSF (Open communication, shared vision, empowerment, responsibility, etc)
Understanding the MSF Team Model and the responsibilities of each (Program Management, Development, Product Management, Test, User Experience, Release Management)
The process model and the milestones for each (Envisioning, Planning, Developing, Stabilizing, Deploying)
The trade-off triangle of resources, schedule and features
Understanding risk management, how to mitigate risk and creating risk contingencies

I scored a 775 using the white papers provided by Microsoft about the MSF 3.0. The link is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&familyid=a71ac896-1d28-45a4-880c-8b0cc8265c63

As for the future, I'm pretty undecided on whether to upgrade my 70-215 to 70-290 or concentrate more on getting the new Microsoft Framework 2.0 MCPD exams. Thoughts?