Yippee!  After studying for the 70-310 exam (XML Web Services and Server Components using VB.NET) for months, I took it this morning for the first time and passed!  

This is the third Microsoft exam I've taken, so that bumps me up to the MCAD.NET status.   To me, the exam was really tough... the toughest so far.  I've taken the 70-229 exam (SQL Server) and 70-305 exam (VB.NET Web Apps) previously and although they were challenging, I had more experience to back my studying for those two tests.   As of yet, I've only used web services minimally and I've never had to create or use a service component.  Despite my lack of current experience with XML web services and server controls, I opted to take the 70-310 because I feel that applications such as Microsoft BizTalk Server will be more and more important in the future as the need to exchange data between desperate systems becomes crucial to being competitive in the business world.

To get my MSCD.NET certification, my next exam will be the 70-300 exam (Analyzing Requirements and Defining Solution Architectures), followed by the 70-306 (Windows-Based Apps w/ VB.NET).