| Overall, the book is fairly complete in its list of topics covered, and the labs do help some to tie together the concepts. However, they tend to fall short of driving the point home and in too many cases the reader is left to his own experimentation. It is written acceptably well, though sparsely in many cases, but requires more rereading than other books on similar topics. Having read Kalani's 70-315 book (for "Web.NET"), I'd suggest looking more closely at his 70-316 book.
This book gives a lot of information in a fairly condensed form. Sometimes, this is done in a fashion where you didn't realize a topic had been covered. The book seems to focus more on passing the test than going to the next level of trying to make sure you understand what is happening. I found myself rereading a lot, but to the book's credit, the reread did generally have some of the information that had not seemed readily apparent until reading through further parts.
If you are new to Windows development, read something else first. Presentation controls (textboxes, grids, etc.) are touched on briefly, but for the most part the book assumes some familiarity with visual designers, managing properties, available controls and their purpose. For example, the book states in chapter 2, "Because an in-depth discussion of the different controls and their functionality is beyond the scope of this book, you should familiarize yourself with the controls in the Toolbox and how they work." Most controls are never described, though many common ones do show up in examples eventually. The "beyond the scope of this book" disclaimer is also given in regards to using XmlDataDocuments (the class, not just the general concept of XML).
Personally, if it's a core piece of Windows Development and/or an objective of the test, I don't see how it can be outside the scope of the book.
The examples sometimes lack "connectivity". For example, its description of configuring trace switches might be a bit more readable to list the entire chunk of XML, e.g.,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding = "utf-8">
<configuration>
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="myBoolenSwitch" value="0" />
<!-- following sets the myTraceSwitch to a value
of TraceLevel.Info -->
<add name="myTraceSwitch" value="3" />
</switches>
</system.diagnostics>
</configuration>
rather than...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding = "utf-8">
<configuration>
</configuration>
followed by descriptive text then
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="myBoolenSwitch" value="0" />
<!-- following sets the myTraceSwitch to a value
of TraceLevel.Info -->
<add name="myTraceSwitch" value="3" />
</switches>
</system.diagnostics>
In many places information given is minimal. Exception handling, correctly, indicates that custom exceptions should inherit from the System.ApplicationException but makes no reference to why this should be used in lieu of System.SystemException.
Some topics seem to be written specifically for those people already familiar with the subject at hand--presumably not the target market. The relationship between XmlDataDocuments and Datasets at the end of chapter six is a good example of this.
Many of these things are small and possibly preferable for solely trying to pass the exam, but at the end of a chapter, it's a bit difficult to know whether or not you've really picked up what you should have.
Expanding the minimal code snippets into exercises throughout the chapters rather than tying the entire thing together in one or two "labs" at the end might also help to better reinforce the information.
At a rough guess, about 15% of the material on the test was not discussed in the book or was glossed over to the point that the topic did not seem familiar to me. There were a number of times that I wound up reviewing notes from the 70-315 exam book or searching the help file for information that should've been there. Another 100 or so pages and dropping out the attempt to cover VB and C# in the same text would go a long way toward making this book better.
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