Shine Technologies Blog

Those who have completed the SCJP exam would recall some of the challenges faced while tackling weird looking code problems aimed at thoroughly testing your understanding of the Java language. While the SCWCD exam has minimal code related questions, which are easier to interpret, it does have its own series of challenges to overcome. Preparation is one of them and can be quite daunting for those new to JEE.

Before I begin, I would like to highlight some of the advantages I experienced after obtaining the certification. Firstly, it provides you with an in-depth knowledge of the JEE platform. Your mind may not retain much of what you studied over the passing months but the strong fundamentals do help you to question best practices when working on a project. Secondly, it also allows you to formulate solutions based on what JEE has to offer and thirdly, the fundamentals could also aid you to spot similarities with other web technologies on the market and eventually become proficient in them.

To ensure that your preparation is effective, it is very important to choose a good study guide. For this, I chose the Head First: Servlets and JSPs book. There are two reasons that made me use this book. Number one, it was an advice from my colleague Glen Worsley, who had already taken and passed the exam. Number two, Head First books market themselves as “Brain Friendly” guides. I cannot stress enough the importance of having a brain friendly guide for something rather complex like JEE. Most textbooks are crammed with words and too much details. The simple diagrams and humorous examples (it’s good to be idempotent!) do help the reader to retain important bits of information. There is plenty to remember and selecting an exam date is as tough as hitting a moving target as I came to learn later.

Progress was slow. The original plan was to complete a chapter a week. An ideal plan it was, but I only managed to read through about 2 or 3 chapters within a month. I dutifully did the questions in the book after each chapter and found them rather tough which is for my own good. I did reasonably well on the first few but I was having a really difficult time when I got to the chapters on expression language and JSTL. There are several ways to accomplish the same thing and one of the difficulties is in trying to remember the JEE APIs taught in the earlier chapters as well as the various JSTL/action tags, which exist for similar goals. A handy tip would be to memorise and understand the various possible tags within the deployment descriptor by heart. Doing so would mean that you have studied a few portions of several chapters in the book. Six months had passed by the time I finished the book and the chapter questions.

While searching the Internet for good SCWCD training tools, I eventually came across Enthuware’s software. Its a really affordable exam simulator with about 8 mock exams and various questions for each chapter. Questions are categorized by their level of difficulty. I attempted the questions for all the chapters and found them not as tough as the ones in the book. Nevertheless, those questions were good practice as it helped me to gauge my strengths and weaknesses. These were presented as graphs and they are a good indicator of which chapters to re-study.

The mock exam questions found at the back of the Head First book is the penultimate gauge to indicate your level of preparedness. It should be done only once and when you truly feel that you know JEE kung-fu. Doing the mock exam too many times can lead to inaccurate results and a false sense of security which may lead to a severe defeat on exam day. Another technique I developed while revising for the exam is to tackle questions from random chapters in the book. This indicates that you are well trained to handle any surprise attacks which you may not see coming. It also means that you have kept the study material from both the early and late chapters close to your heart.

I eventually picked a good date to sit for the exam and passed with a good score. As usual, I marked the unsure questions and did the ones I knew. I had about an hour of extra time by the time I finished my first run of the questions. I then used the remaining time to ponder on the marked questions. Months of preparation had finally paid off and I was able to enjoy a healthy balance of work and personal life once again. As with most exams, the preparation does require some amount of sacrifice to personal time, but the returns and benefits are rewarding.

The following is a write-up of the highlights during the Sun Developer Day which I just attended. The early day kicked off with the usual registration and light refreshments before moving on to the ballroom for the opening keynote by Sun’s Director of Technology Outreach, Reginald Hutcherson.

The keynote addressed the possibilities of JavaFX in the non-PC arena such as televisions and mobile phones or according to Reginald, “any screen you will ever come across”. While it is a bold claim for a new technology in a world with existing competitors such as Flex, Silverlight, GWT …etc, it would be interesting to see how JavaFX performs in 2009. The keynote wrapped up with the advocacy of using open-source technology which was not surprising.

The demo shootout showcased the more interesting bits of the event. The first demo demonstrated the capabilities of JavaFX such as widget animation, a Flickr demo where click-able images are downloaded on the fly while floating across a canvas and finally, a video puzzle game with the video playing in the background. Performance was great and seamless considering the fact that they were all done on MacBook Pros. The next demo, showcased a compiz/beryl-like desktop for open Solaris and virtualization using VirtualBox which is now owned by Sun. Next up, is a quick 5 minute walkthrough of using NetBeans to produce a JavaFX app. This walkthrough shows off the tools within Netbeans such as drag and drop code generation and on the fly coding and previewing which is really impressive from a usability point of view. A feature which allows importing of Illustrator-created graphics was also mentioned, although it was never demonstrated.

The next bit discussed on the direction Java SE is heading and covered topics such as closure, Java Modules (JAM - JSR 277), and the usage of annotations in Swing, such as event handling…etc. While the morning covered the main highlights, the rest of the day was spent on code demonstrations on various topics such as REST, more JavaFX, SOA, MySQL, Dtrace and xVM (Virtual Box). Also, we got to see many of the features within Netbeans which were used during the demos. Sun is trying to market Netbeans to a wider range of developers (PHP, Ruby…etc.), which may be a challenge where there are many who have already got used to the Eclipse environment.

In general, the demos were well conducted and interesting. However, there were a few that were done in a hurry or needed more time for explanation as they were heavy topics (eg. SOA with OpenESB and Java CAPS). Unfortunately, there was not enough time for a Q&A session. Its understandable Q&As can potentially take up more time, but I’m sure there is always time for 1 or 2.

Personally, my main aim for attending the event was to learn more about JavaFX. I was impressed with what I saw and I appreciate the fact that Sun is stepping up their game in the IDE market. This is important, if they are to compete with the likes of Microsoft’s Visual Studio. However, one itching question remains. Is JavaFX able to compete with other web technologies in terms of performance on older hardware or will it be another slow Swing app?

Having accomplished one of my main short term goals in life, I thought I would reflect on the recent events that earned me my first certification outside of Uni.

You might be thinking, whats the big deal about answering a couple of Java questions, nabbing the cert and moving on with life. Besides, we all sat for the tricky test tailored by Shine that got us this job. The only way to answer your question is to try the questions in the diagnostic exam by Whizlabs or head over to the Java Ranch website and try their mock exams.

A couple of us sitting for the exam tried out the questions on Whizlabs and had our butt kicked. Things we thought we knew about Java. The hardest part about achieving our goal was the preparation. Our initial plan was to pass the exam by December last year, however, other commitments at the client site threw our schedule off course. By the time we got back to studying which was around February, our knowledge of the first few chapters were stale. To make it worse, I had to regain my motivation to put in additional hours into the preparation which is seperate from Shine’s training time.

February was rather short and as March approached I was entering panic mode. By this time, I had covered about five chapters which left me with another five more to go. The next few weeks were spent flying through the remaining chapters and trying out the self-tests that came with at the end of each chapter. I tried out the Whizlabs exam to get an estimate of where I am at and I was rather disappointed with my score of 30%. The good thing is, I get to study the questions I got wrong and work on my weak points. I tried the questions on the CD that came attached with the SCJP book I was studying and I found the questions much tougher and trickier. The whole objective is to thoroughly test your knowledge.

I decided to stop doing the questions on the CD as the results I was getting were rather demoralizing. I spent Easter finishing up the last chapter and doing some practice exams with Whizlabs. One of the things that I look out for while doing an exam, is the clock. For example, if you had 72 questions to answer within 3 hours, you would have about 2.5 minutes to answer every one of them. I adopted an approach of answering the “easy” questions that I am confident with first and “Marking” those that I could not answer or I was unsure off. If you still have about an hour left after your first run, you can relax a little and review those questions that you have not answered. Try your best to give an answer and since its multiple-choice, analyze each answer and deduce which one feels right. You should still have abit of time left after answering your questions, so go back to the ones that you have marked. From personal experience, I found that I was able to tackle the questions that I was unsure about after I had answered the rest of them. Some tough questions really do not mix well with stress and you will be amazed at your ability to tackle them after the initial hurdle.

I was really nervous at the actual exam but the valuable experience gained with Whizlabs gave me that confidence to see it through. The questions are actually easier than the Whizlab’s ones but they are designed to keep you engrossed! So whatever you do, watch the clock, mark tough questions and review!

P.S. I have never passed a practice exam on Whizlabs before. Nearly did, but not counted as a pass. I scored 70% on the actual exam and its the first exam I ever passed. If you are coping well with the Whizlabs exams, you know you are doing well.