Microsoft MCSD Updates: 70-486 and 70-487
The Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) certification has long been a benchmark for developers who want to prove their skills in building modern applications. Among the certifications in this track, exams 70-486 and 70-487 hold a central place, covering web application development and data services using Microsoft technologies. As the tech landscape continues to shift, Microsoft has made significant updates to these exams, and developers need to stay informed to remain competitive in the job market.
Both exams have gone through multiple revisions over the years to reflect changes in development practices, cloud integration, and the evolving demands of enterprise software. Whether you are preparing to take these exams for the first time or revisiting them after a gap, knowing what has changed and what to expect is essential. This article walks through every important aspect of the updated 70-486 and 70-487 exams so that candidates can plan their preparation with clarity.
What the MCSD Certification Path Actually Covers
The MCSD certification is designed for developers who build solutions using Microsoft technologies, particularly within the .NET ecosystem. The path typically requires passing multiple exams, with 70-486 and 70-487 being key components that validate expertise in web and service-oriented development.
Exam 70-486 focuses on developing ASP.NET MVC web applications, while 70-487 concentrates on developing Microsoft Azure and web services. Together they represent a comprehensive picture of what a modern .NET developer is expected to know. Candidates who earn this certification demonstrate that they can work across front-end development, back-end services, and cloud-based deployments.
A Closer Look at Exam 70-486 Objectives
Exam 70-486, officially titled “Developing ASP.NET MVC Web Applications,” tests a developer’s ability to design, build, and deploy robust web applications using the ASP.NET MVC framework. The exam covers areas such as designing the application architecture, developing the user experience, troubleshooting and debugging web applications, and managing security settings.
The updated version of 70-486 places greater emphasis on performance optimization and security best practices compared to earlier iterations. Candidates are now expected to demonstrate comfort with bundling, minification, caching strategies, and handling cross-site scripting or request forgery vulnerabilities. The addition of modern deployment techniques and a stronger focus on responsive design reflects the industry’s shift toward mobile-first development.
Key Changes Introduced in the 70-487 Revision
Exam 70-487, titled “Developing Microsoft Azure and Web Services,” tests a candidate’s ability to create and consume web services, work with data sources, and deploy solutions to Microsoft Azure. The revised edition of this exam reflects Microsoft’s growing investment in cloud-first development approaches and places Azure integration at the forefront of every topic.
Among the notable changes is the expanded coverage of Azure Service Bus, Azure Storage, and scalable API design. The exam now expects candidates to understand service endpoints, message queuing, and distributed system patterns at a deeper level than before. Topics around RESTful service design, OData, and WCF have also been refined to align with real-world application patterns currently used in enterprise environments.
Application Architecture and Design Principles Tested
One of the shared areas across both updated exams is the emphasis on application architecture and design principles. Candidates must show they can make informed decisions about application structure, choosing between monolithic and service-oriented approaches, and applying patterns such as repository, factory, and dependency injection correctly.
Both exams test the ability to separate concerns in an application, use interfaces for abstraction, and structure code in a way that promotes testability. The updates specifically call out the need for candidates to justify architectural decisions rather than simply identify them, which means that a surface-level understanding of design patterns is no longer sufficient to pass.
Security Requirements Across Both Exams
Security has always been part of these exams, but the updated versions treat it with significantly more depth. Candidates for 70-486 must now demonstrate the ability to implement authentication and authorization using ASP.NET Identity, configure SSL, and apply proper role-based and claims-based access controls within web applications.
For 70-487, security requirements extend into the service layer, including securing web APIs with tokens, implementing OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, and protecting service endpoints from unauthorized access. Both exams reflect the growing industry recognition that security is not an afterthought but a foundational responsibility for every developer.
Data Access Strategies and Entity Framework Usage
Data access is a significant component of both exams, and the updates bring a refined focus on Entity Framework and modern data handling strategies. The 70-487 exam, in particular, expects candidates to demonstrate proficiency with Code First, Database First, and Model First approaches, as well as the ability to handle migrations, concurrency conflicts, and lazy versus eager loading.
For 70-486, data access tends to appear in the context of building model layers for MVC applications, but the connection to service calls and async data retrieval has been strengthened. Candidates are expected to understand when to use stored procedures, views, or LINQ queries, and to evaluate trade-offs between these approaches in terms of performance and maintainability.
Testing, Debugging, and Troubleshooting Skills Required
Both exams include a dedicated section on testing, debugging, and troubleshooting, which reflects how seriously Microsoft treats software quality in its certification framework. Candidates must be comfortable with unit testing strategies, mock frameworks such as Moq, and test-driven development principles.
The 70-486 exam emphasizes browser developer tools, remote debugging in Visual Studio, and logging frameworks for diagnosing issues in deployed web applications. Exam 70-487 extends this into distributed environments, where candidates must know how to trace service calls, handle faults in WCF services, and interpret Azure diagnostic logs to identify performance bottlenecks or service failures.
Azure Integration Points Every Candidate Must Learn
With cloud adoption accelerating across industries, the 70-487 exam dedicates substantial coverage to Azure integration. Candidates must be comfortable deploying web services and APIs to Azure App Service, configuring scaling rules, and working with Azure SQL Database as a back-end data store.
The exam also covers Azure WebJobs, Azure Functions in the context of service automation, and the use of Azure Resource Manager for infrastructure deployment. Candidates who approach 70-487 without a solid grounding in Azure will find this section particularly demanding, since the questions often require practical knowledge rather than theoretical recall.
Performance Optimization Techniques That Appear in Questions
Performance is examined in both certifications, and the updated exams include more nuanced questions on this topic than previous versions did. For 70-486, performance optimization topics include output caching, donut caching, HTTP compression, async controllers, and reducing the number of HTTP requests through bundling.
The 70-487 exam examines performance through the lens of service scalability, including throttling, pagination in APIs, connection pooling, and efficient serialization formats like JSON versus XML. Candidates are expected to recognize performance anti-patterns and propose solutions that improve throughput without compromising reliability or data integrity.
Deployment and Release Management Procedures
Deployment has become a more prominent topic in both updated exams, reflecting the shift toward continuous delivery practices in modern development teams. For 70-486, deployment topics include publishing to IIS, configuring web.config transformations, and managing different environments such as development, staging, and production.
Exam 70-487 covers deployment to Azure in more depth, including packaging and deploying cloud services, managing deployment slots, and implementing blue-green deployment strategies. Candidates who have practical experience with Visual Studio deployment tools and Azure DevOps pipelines will find this section more approachable, while those with only theoretical knowledge may need additional hands-on practice.
State Management Approaches in Web Applications
State management remains a core topic within 70-486, and the updated exam introduces scenarios that require candidates to choose the most appropriate state management technique given specific constraints. Options covered include cookies, session state, application state, TempData, ViewBag, and ViewData, each with distinct use cases and limitations.
The exam tests not just knowledge of these mechanisms but the ability to evaluate them against requirements such as scalability, persistence, and security. For example, a question might ask candidates to select the best approach for storing user preferences in a load-balanced environment, which requires understanding how session affinity and distributed caching interact with different state management strategies.
Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control Patterns
Both exams have updated their coverage of dependency injection and inversion of control, reflecting how central these patterns have become in modern .NET development. Candidates are expected to demonstrate the ability to register services with a dependency injection container, resolve dependencies at runtime, and configure the lifetime of registered components.
For 70-486, this often appears in the context of configuring MVC controllers and services within the ASP.NET pipeline. For 70-487, dependency injection is relevant when building service layers and ensuring that components can be tested independently. Candidates who are familiar with containers such as Unity, Autofac, or the built-in ASP.NET Core container will have an advantage in this area.
Preparing Effectively for the Updated Exam Format
Preparation for the updated exams requires a combination of reading official documentation, practicing with hands-on labs, and reviewing sample questions. Microsoft Learn offers structured learning paths specifically aligned to the 70-486 and 70-487 objectives, and these should form the foundation of any study plan.
Beyond official resources, candidates benefit from building small projects that cover exam topics such as implementing authentication in an MVC application, consuming a REST API with HttpClient, or deploying a web service to Azure. Practical experience solidifies concepts that are difficult to retain through reading alone, and it also prepares candidates for the scenario-based questions that appear frequently in both exams.
Retirement Timeline and What Developers Should Know
Microsoft has announced retirement timelines for many of its legacy exams, and developers planning to pursue the 70-486 and 70-487 certifications should be aware of these schedules. Microsoft has indicated that these exams, like others in the classic MCSD track, are part of a broader transition toward role-based certifications under the updated Microsoft certification framework.
Candidates who are mid-way through their preparation should prioritize completing their exams before any announced retirement date to ensure they receive credit for their work. Those who have already passed one of the two exams and are waiting to complete the second should treat their preparation as time-sensitive and plan their study schedule accordingly.
Career Value of Holding These Certifications
Even as Microsoft transitions toward role-based certifications, holding the MCSD with 70-486 and 70-487 continues to carry value in the job market. Many employers, particularly those running established .NET ecosystems, actively look for candidates who have demonstrated their knowledge through formal certification.
The skills validated by these exams, including web application development, cloud services integration, security implementation, and performance optimization, are directly applicable to daily development work. Candidates who earn these certifications often report that the preparation process itself improved their practical skills significantly, making them more effective developers regardless of the credential’s formal recognition.
Conclusion
The updates to Microsoft’s 70-486 and 70-487 exams represent a meaningful effort to keep the MCSD certification relevant in a rapidly changing development landscape. Both exams have been revised to reflect current industry standards, incorporating deeper coverage of cloud integration, security practices, performance strategies, and modern deployment workflows. Developers who approach these certifications with a structured plan and genuine hands-on practice will find the updated content challenging but achievable.
What makes these certifications worth pursuing, even as Microsoft transitions its broader certification program, is the depth of knowledge they demand. Passing 70-486 requires a developer to think critically about web application architecture, user experience, security, and performance in an integrated way. Passing 70-487 demands fluency in service design, data access patterns, and Azure deployment scenarios that directly mirror real-world enterprise development tasks. Neither exam rewards passive memorization; both require a candidate to reason through complex scenarios and apply knowledge in context.
Developers who invest time in building projects, studying official documentation, and reviewing practice questions from credible sources will not only pass these exams but will emerge with a stronger foundation for tackling complex software problems. The certification process, when approached seriously, functions as an accelerated curriculum that covers topics many self-taught developers might otherwise skip. Topics like state management under load-balanced conditions, distributed tracing in service environments, and OAuth 2.0 implementation are all areas where structured exam preparation adds measurable value.
As the tech industry continues to evolve, certifications that validate both foundational knowledge and cloud-era skills will remain relevant to hiring managers and development leads. The 70-486 and 70-487 updates have positioned these exams to reflect the kind of work developers are actually doing today, making the credential meaningful beyond its formal recognition. Developers who complete this track earn more than a certificate; they earn a broader and more structured understanding of the Microsoft development ecosystem that will serve them throughout their careers.
- Category: All Certifications Microsoft
- Tags: exam, exam updates, exams, mcsd, microsoft, mvc, mvc 5, updates, visual studio, web applications, web applications exams, web services, windows azure
