070-580: Windows Mobile 6.5 Application Development

This may be a little late to the party but I thought I would share some information on this exam. Because you sign an NDA when you take the exam I cannot comment on specifics of the exam content, however I can offer some guidance on the study guide:-

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-580

This exam replaced the previous 070-540 exam which covered application development using Windows Mobile 5.0, .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. Therefore a large percentage of the material is the same between the two. The new topics come in the form of Widgets, LINQ, ADO.NET Sync Services and Windows Mobile Tools such as FakeGPS. The full list of skills measured can be read on the exam link above. There are a couple of oddities:–

• The material is updated for .NETCF 3.5 by including LINQ but WCF is not listed.
• ADO.NET Sync Services has never really been a core part of the development tools.
• Finally one of the skills measured is creating a desktop installer for your application. There is not standard way of doing this but the guidance does exist (see list below) to put together a dll which acts as a custom install action within your desktop installer.

So once you’ve familiarised yourself with all the skills measured you’ll skip to the next tab on Preparation Materials and find there is nothing at all listed. Here is a list I think will help with your preparation:-

Microsoft Mobile Development Handbook – Microsoft Press. While the main book covers .NETCF 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005, the last chapter gives a run down on new features in Visual Studio 2008 and .NETCF 3.5 including LINQ. It ticks almost all of the Skills measured, there are a few articles which cover the new topics:-

Developing Widgets for Windows Mobile 6.5 – MSDN. The Windows Mobile 6.5.3 SDK added some support for Widget development to Visual Studio 2008 but I find it just hangs Visual Studio. This article shows the “old” approach from creating the HTML, JavaScript and building the ZIP file and renaming.

Programming Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET (Devices) – MSDN. Andy’s article describes Synchronization services from setting up and running synchronization through to optimisations for mobile use.

Using the FakeGPS Utility – MSDN.

The 70-580 exam is quite new and it is quite clear that if and when there is an exam created for Windows Phone 7 development it will by necessity be completely different. However for now 70-580 is the most up-to-date Microsoft exam for Mobility and is one of the requirements for the Mobility competency within the Microsoft Partner Program. Currently it doesn’t appear that there are any exams at all for Silverlight, but there are some coming in the next few months for .NET 4.0 and WPF.