Passed Visio Exam 70-545

I managed to squeak by the fairly new Visio exam, released last September, so I am now a Visio Application Developer.

The exam was fairly straightforward, multiple choice as usual.  I was surprised there were no exhibits or case studies in my version.  Finished it in about 30 minutes, after going over the marked questions a couple of times and kicking the PC with the loud fan next to me at the test centre. 

Why is it that test centres have the crappiest PCs? 

Couple of hints - know MSI and everything else around deploying a Visio solution, stencil, or template.  Another one that came up a bit was how to reference certain properties and respond to events.  I was a bit surprised at how specific the code examples were, and how much the exam focused on deployment rather than solution architecture.

Know your events & how to create masters & stencils.

Also know the differences between the new Linked Data feature and the old Database Wizard feature.

There are also some integration questions related to VBA in Visio and other Office applications.

I used my usual method (documented at SqlServerCentral) of studying with OneNote.  Downloading the SDK helped.  So did reading www.visguy.com and the MSDN/Technet articles.  If I could only figure out how to get OneNote to write the exam for me...

There was also some good content from the various Visio Conferences which posted lots of PowerPoints (oddly enough no Visio diagrams instead of PowerPoints).

I hope that the next version provides a better way of interfacing with the Shapesheet and Formulas, and gives easier access to stencils & templates.  Better integration with Reporting Services & the filesystem would be interesting. 

And add some Access-style form layout functionality. (size similar anyone?  shrink to fit?  align lefts?)

Next step is to check out the Visio to XAML functionality for some Silverlight mashups...

If you do end up getting your Visio Developer Certification please let me know what you do with Visio.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-545.mspx