Today, I sat exam 74-137: Office 2003 XML Solution. Come on, it’s 2007 now! But I had to sit this exam. This is a partner competency exam which is compulsary for every Microsoft Partner to meet some pre requisites. If you work for MS partner company, you know what I mean. Yes, I hate it actually. Any 2003 technologies are over, replaced with 2007 flavour.

The exam itself is not too difficult. It is not counted toward MCP certification. This is partner competency pre requisite. Comparing with any other MCP exams, this is easier. It’s not asked detail coding or examining detail case study. Most of the questions are about technology assessment. Which tool you shoud choose for fixing particular problem, that’s it. These are some clues for anybody who want to take this exam:

Number of question: 50
MS Infopath 2003: 30%
MS Excel/MS Word VBA: 30%
Research Service add in: 20%
XML: 20%

Some important concepts:

• Understand the problem solved by Smart Document, Research Service, XML Schema, and web services. You should know the pros and cons for each tool, and also the advantages for each.
• Understand the XML schema (XSD), transform (XSLT), and data (XML). You shoud know the diferences between each of them, and when to use it.
• Knowing how to read, write, and import XML data with VBA code.
• Know how to do merging and summarizing the data in Infopath Form.
• Know how to access web services from Office Solution, either using Excel, InfoPath, or Word.
• Understand the differences between several trust level when deploying InfoPath solution, specially in SharePoint environment and active directory.
• Understand how to apply digital certificate

I got 986/1000 in this exam.

Good luck!