I passed my 70-551 upgrade exam a couple of days ago, giving me MCPD Web Developer certification.

Having developed web-based applications in C#/.Net 2.0 for the past few years, this was relatively straightforward. There are some tricky questions on things like:

• serialization
• ACLs and code access security
• encryption

However, I found the SQL Server 2000 developer exam (70-229) to be more taxing, as well as potentially more useful for building enterprise software, so I am surprised that the new MCPD (Enterprise Applications Developer) certification does not have any detailed database knowledge requirements.

Anyhow, a very handy guide to studing for and passing the 70-551 exam is here: http://www.alexthissen.nl/blogs/main/archive/2006/12/31/prepping-for-exam-70-551.aspx