In all of the prep guides to these exams, Section I is identical.
Here are the goals I looked at:
Manage data in a .NET Framework application by using .NET Framework 2.0 system types. (Refer System namespace)
- Value types
- Reference types
- Attributes
- Generic types
- Exception classes
- Boxing and UnBoxing
- TypeForwardedToAttributes class
Nothing too special here. Everybody should know about generics by now. The TypeForwardedToAttribute is new. Here some info I found on that:
http://www.heege.net/blog/PermaLink,guid,8d076332-4fb0-44b5-a829-4c4d653de2d6.aspx
http://notgartner.com/posts/2955.aspx
Manage a group of associated data in a .NET Framework application by using collections. (Refer System.Collections namespace)
- ArrayList class
- Collection interfaces
- Iterators
- Hashtable class
- CollectionBase class and ReadOnlyCollectionBase class
- DictionaryBase class and DictionaryEntry class
- Comparer class
- Queue class
- SortedList class
- BitArray class
- Stack class
Again, nothing too new here. The only thing to be aware of is the yield return statement in C#. It seems that a similiar construct is not available in VB. Some good discussion can be see here:
http://robgarrett.com/Blogs/software/archive/2005/09/13/1588.aspx
Improve type safety and application performance in a .NET Framework application by using generic collections. (Refer System.Collections.Generic namespace)
- Collection.Generic interfaces
- Generic Dictionary
- Generic Comparer class and Generic EqualityComparer class
- Generic KeyValuePair structure
- Generic List class, Generic List.Enumerator structure, and Generic SortedList class
- Generic Queue class and Generic Queue.Enumerator structure
- Generic SortedDictionary class
- Generic LinkedList
- Generic Stack class and Generic Stack.Enumerator structure
Just the generic implementations of the collection classes. Know that generics are faster because they prevent a lot of boxing/unboxing operations.
Implement .NET Framework interfaces to cause components to comply with standard contracts. (Refer System namespace)
- IComparable interface
- IDisposable interface
- IConvertible interface
- ICloneable interface
- INullableValue interface
- IEquatable interface
- IFormattable interface
Some neat stuff here. A lot of it existed in 1.1, I just never had a chance to use it.
IConvertible
Specifies means to convert an object to a native value type. Convert.ToInt32… Throw InvalidCastException if no meaningful conversion.
INullableValue
Removed in RTM
http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2005/08/11/450640.aspx
IEquatable<T>
Implements the CompareTo<T> method so that different object types can be compared.
IFormattable
ToString implementation. Difference between overriding ToString and implementing IFormattable is that the currentCulture is provided when implementing IFormattable.
That's it for now. Next post-> Configuration Manager and Debugging.