BizTalk Book Release: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 (70-595) Certification Guide

I received word from Packt Publishing today that our book has officially been published.  This book has been around 10 months in the making so it is very rewarding to see this book released.

The intent of this book is to prepare experienced BizTalk developers and administrators with the tools that they need to write the exam.  It was an interesting project and different from my last book adventure. In the BizTalk LOB book we were really interested in addressing a few core concepts within a particular chapter.  For instance in the SAP chapter, I emphasized on how to send and receive IDOCs.  This time around in the MCTS book we needed to address the requirements of the exam to ensure that we provided proper coverage.  I definitely feel that we did hit the areas that we needed to hit.

Another interesting aspect of the MCTS book was our existing NDA as we all wrote (and passed) the exam before starting out on our journey.  This book is not a  cheat sheet.  You won’t find the exact questions and answers on the exam.  Overall the book is around 467 pages so there is a lot of content to cover.  If you invest the time in reading the book and working through the examples and practice tests, I am confident that you will do well on the exam.

It was a pleasure working with the other authors: Johan Hedberg and Morten la Cour.  Writing books is not always a smooth process and Johan, as the lead author, did a great job keeping the book moving.  I had not worked with Morten before the project and appreciated the professionalism that he brought to the project.

Creating a polished product like this book takes more than just talented authors.  There is a core team that is working behind the scenes that really make these projects successful.  With that said I would like to thank the Packt team for their determination in getting this project to the printers.  I would also like to thank the very talented reviewers who held us in check and increased the quality of the book.  These reviewers include:

• Mikael Hakansson
• Steef-Jan Wiggers
• Jan Eliasen
• Basil Cheng
• Sandeep Kesiraju
• Todd Uhl

The book is available for purchase from both Packt and Amazon websites.

 

 

What’s Next?

I have already been asked by a few people, what’s next?  Do you have another book coming out?  I do not have any immediate plans to write another book.  If a topic did come up that was extremely interesting I would consider it.    Writing is a very large time commitment and has been a very positive experience but I do want to spend some time reading(and learning new things)  instead of writing.