Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Announcing a fully revised second edition of this popular SELF-PACED TRAINING KIT designed to help maximize your performance on 70-536, a core exam for the MCTS and MCPD certifications. This 2-in-1 kit includes the official Microsoft study guide, plus practice tests on CD to help you assess your skills. It comes packed with the tools and features exam candidates want most including in-depth, self-paced training based on final exam content; rigorous, objective-by-objective review; exam tips from expert, exam-certified authors; and customizable testing options. It also provides real-world scenarios, case study examples, and troubleshooting labs for the skills and expertise you can apply to the job. Focusing on the fundamentals of .NET application development, this official study guide covers using system types, collections, and generics to help manage data; validating input, reformatting text, and extracting data with regular expressions; developing services, application domains, and multithreaded applications; enhancing your applications by adding graphics and images; implementing code access security, role-based security, and data encryption; working with serialization and reflection techniques; instrumenting your applications with logging and tracing; and interacting with legacy code using COM Interop and PInvoke. Work at your own pace through the lessons and lab exercises. Then assess yourself using 300+ practice and review questions on the CD, featuring multiple, customizable testing options to meet your specific needs. Choose timed or untimed testing mode, generate random tests, or focus on discrete objectives. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers including pointers back to the book for further study. You also get an evaluation version of Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 software and an exam discount voucher making this kit an exceptional value and a great career investment.

Key Book Benefits

Comprehensive exam prep study guide In-depth coverage of exam objectives and sub-objectives plus instructive case studies and troubleshooting scenarios to enhance your performance on the job 300+ practice and review questions Test engine that enables customized testing, pre-assessment and post-assessment, and automated scoring and feedback Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# code samples on CD Handy exam-mapping grid Evaluation version of Visual Studio 2008 software 15 percent exam-discount voucher from Microsoft (limited time offer) Entire study guide in searchable eBook format

Review
Unbelievably well done, January 23, 2009 By William G. Ryan "Uber Book Nerd" (Atlanta, GA)

I purchased Sonoma's first CRM book and thought it was particularly well written. Well, they followed suit here and wrote about as good of a CRM Development book as someone could write. I say that in all seriousness b/c I work for a prominent CRM consultancy and was thinking about writing a programming book myself. They beat me to it and they did such a good job on this it'd be hard to find something to gripe about.

First off, it's 640 pages and there's very little fluff. That's a lot of content to write and the only way one could write on the subject this thoroughly is by first having a LOT of real-world experience.

But the size/exhaustive coverage isn't the most impressive part, the relevancy and attention to detail are. When I first learned CRM for instance, Plugin testing was the bain of my existence. I stayed up several nights trying to code a 'real' tool to test with without having to unregister an existing plugin and go through trial and error. Not only do they include a Mock framework for testing (honestly, if you're a CRM developer, their coverage of Plugins alone more than justifies the book's cost) but they addressed pretty much every issue I can think of related to plugins.

Another thing that's striking about the book is their attention to coding elegance. Going back to the plugin example for a second, their use of Custom attributes in support of the Plugin code they write is so elegant any .NET developer out there would have to give them credit for the implementation.

Now I'll admit I am highly biased in this regard up front as I have been on the Workflow Foundation bandwagon since Workflow foundation came into existence.. but their coverage of Workflow is just plain awesome. Other implementation books only show workflow code as an afterthought if they touch it at all. Not here, they hit the subject straight on and covered the subject as well as anyone could in the space provided. Seriously. I don't have my copy of the book in front of me but they go through about 6 or 7 in depth examples of creating Activity derivatives and each one is meaty. (As another aside, their code is very well organized and they don't skimp on anything - they're even meticulous with Regions for example - which don't have any real effect on code performance but have a huge affect on readability when you're going through their examples).

They also have quite a bit of coverage of custom .aspx pages. While the cool factor isn't as high here, it has nothing to do with how they wrote it, plain old aspx just isn't going to be as sexy as workflow activities. They deserve credit though for the examples they came up with as none of it ever gets boring.

The fact the book remains interesting (and let's face it, covering the CRM API isn't exactly the easiest thing to make exciting) and relevant is testimony to both their skill as authors and their real-world experience with CRM. The proofreading is impeccable as is the readability. Although there are several authors, it's really hard to tell when there's been a transition from one author to another.

In summary, hats off to the Sonoma team for putting a book this good together - they did a first class job from start to finish and their hard work is evident in pretty much every single page and every code example.