Sunday, December 11, 2005

TS: and PRO: Prefixs for Exams

VS 05 and SQL 05 Exams will have TS: and PRO: as official pre-fixs...

As there are going to be two major category of exams in next Gen of Certs, it is important to clearly seperate them... Cert Team wanted to make sure that candidates are able to differentiate between "Technology Series" Exams and "Professional Series" Exams by reading the names itself... To make this true for all the audiences i.e. Developers, IT Professionals etc the simplest common way was to add prefixes...

That is when it was decided that all "Technology Series" Exams Names (MCTS exam names) will be prefixed with "TS:" and all "Professional Series" Exams Names (MCITP and MCPD exam names) will be prefixed with "PRO:"...

Hope this new convention will help...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Visal I've a question for you: I'm involved to get the MCAD certification and at the moment I've passed the first exam. I'm planning to pass the required 3 exams around august 2006. I can continue with my roadmap or could be problems in the future (whenthe new exams will be available?).
Thanks in advance.
Steve

Vishal R Joshi said...

Yes you can continue with your MCAD certifications... Your certifications will remain valid for .Net 1.X... When you decide to shift to .Net 2.0 there will also be upgrade options available for you so continuing with MCAD is a good option...

Check out the below link for more information
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/newgen/faq/

Anonymous said...

Vishal - I have two questions

1) What new test will replace the 70-315? I think it is the 70-536 (C#) version?

2) I do not have and have never had any certifications at all, not have I taken any certification test. What certification path would you recommend? I am thinking the MCPD (with either the Windows Development or Web Developer emphasis - or both) is the path I should take. It seems that I should not bother at this point with the MCAD, since I have not taken any test at all yet. I can wait for the 70-536 because I need at least that amount of titme for studying anyway.

Thank-you for taking the time on this, as I have combing the web and cannot determine the best choice for my situation.

Vishal R Joshi said...

1.) Exams in the new generation are different than the MCAD/MCSD world but if you have to draw a line you can draw a line between 70-315 and 70-528... There is no different version for VB.Net and C# in the new exams, but yes you can take 70-528 in C#...

2.) If you have not taken any exams and you intend to start with .Net 2.0 then MCPD will be a good choice for you... If you want to work on .Net 1.X then MCAD/MCSD should be your choice... Which path within MCPD to choose is upto you, if you work on web projects choose web track, if you work on windows then choose windows track... If intend to work at enterprise level then MCPD EA should be your choice...
Best luck...
Vishal