MTA: Software Development Fundamentals

by Neil Barnett (Developer)

Software Development Fundamentals provides students with fundamental software development concepts. Students who complete this course will have reviewed all of the exam objectives and be on their way to preparing for Microsoft Technology Associate Exam #98‐361. It can also serve as a stepping stone to the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist exams.

This Software Development Fundamentals courseware is one of seven courses in the Microsoft Technology Associate Series. Other courses available in the series include:

Database Administration Fundamentals
Windows Development Fundamentals
Web Development Fundamentals
Networking Fundamentals
Security Fundamentals
Windows Server Administration Fundamentals

174 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the Microsoft Press book for what will be my 7th MTA certification. In all, the books for the MTA exams are terrible and fail to actually teach anything, though they roughly cover exam objectives, and this was no exception. While these exams are very simple and short, there is always a concept that is not in the text that is on the exam. In this case, I felt the first 2-3 chapters would be inaccessible to a novice programmer (they made good sense to me with years of experience). The later chapters diverged from teaching development and started in on Database design and normalization, Windows service behavior, and other topics. I understand these topics fall within the stated objectives of the exam, but perhaps they should not. The MTA program as a whole would be better served if there was less crossover between subjects and subjects were treated with greater depth. Database normalization should be left exclusive to the domain of the MTA Database Fundamentals exams and its MCTS and MCITP cousins.