Java Certification - SCJP and SCBCD Passage
I did not find articles in Habr in which the authors described Java certification and shared their training experience and feelings of passing.
To some extent I would like to fill the gap with this article. Under the cut - my opinion on the issue - to pass or not to pass certification, a brief overview of Java certifications, as well as personal experience and feelings from registering, preparing and submitting Java certifications SCJP and SCBCD.
In the beginning, someone might ask - why should I (I'm considering Java programmers here) generally need to pass some kind of certification?
I have no definite answer. I saw employers who treated them almost with trepidation, and others who treated them as useless pieces of paper (whose owners unreasonably demand higher wages for themselves, etc.). I also know excellent signors and architects who do not have a single certificate, as, indeed, even a university education (yes!).
For me, the benefits are as follows:
Stimulates the study / systematize knowledge of some technology.
It often happens with me that I want to bury myself in some kind of technology, but I don’t want to do it with swoops and fits and starts, but it is a pity to allocate a lot of time for this, it just does not work. But when I registered for certification for a certain day and you know that certification - in three weeks - it helps to concentrate and find time. It also helps to concentrate here that I really do not want to fail the certification - firstly, it is insulting for the time and effort spent (although there is any benefit from them anyway), secondly, if you passed the paid certificate at the company's expense, then how then to look into the eyes of those who paid for your certification (and if you paid for a paid certificate from your own pocket, then you are sorry for your money).
By the way, some people generally believe that the best time to prepare and pass certification for some technology is just the “middle” of studying this technology. When there is already some knowledge, but there is still a lot to be mastered, and I want to master, and the first ardor is already cooling. Here certification certifies it.
A number of certificates (for example, Sun-ovsky SCJD) tests the ability to develop real-world applications, and not just obstinacy and good memory.
Certificates are just nice to have. It's nice because you know that you were able to take it and pass it, while many didn’t have enough for this purpose (for whom focus and obstinacy, for whom luck, and for whom banal knowledge of the subject).
Certificates, whatever you say, are still taken into account by many companies (in Java they are welcome, and some employers insistently ask them, for those whose bread is Oracle and Cisco, I think certificates are often more important than higher education diplomas). An interesting point is that some employers look at certificates only as a guarantee for a certain level of a specialist in a certain field, but some of them also look at the fact that a person passes them. Those. in their opinion, the fact that a person passes certification certifies in itself about his focus and ability to set goals for himself and to achieve them.
')
If we talk about Java certificates, then they can be divided into two groups.
The first is Sun's certification tree.
www.sun.com/training/certification/java/index.xml - in all its glory.
The second is all sorts of third-party paid and free certification. Of the serious ones, BrainBench comes to mind (http://www.brainbench.com/), others I would say are much less accounted for. In general, in general, in my opinion, certificates from Sun have significantly more weight for employers.
Therefore, they will be discussed.
Sun offers the following certification levels -
- Sun Certified Java Associate (SCJA) - shows that you know what Java is and what it is eaten with. Literally - "... that you have a basic set of knowledge that allows you to start a career as a developer of software applications or a project manager for developing a software product based on Java technology." This certificate is not required to pass the rest, and therefore very few people pass it (in my experience and feelings) (at least in Russia).
- Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) - Shows knowledge of the language, standard libraries (java.io, java.util, java.lang), platforms (how to compile from the command line, how to build a .class-file or jar, use the classpath), some knowledge of the work of the JVM (garbage collection, finalize, etc.). Required for passing more powerful certificates.
- Sun Certified Java Developer (SCJD) - a certificate showing practical development skills (that is, an exam not in the form of a test, but in writing an application) on the J2SE platform. Swing, Standard IO, multithreading / RMI. Usually those who write desktop standalone – applications or fat clients (which are often written using JNLP) hand over.
- Sun Certified Web Component Developer (SCWCD) ​​- respectively for web developers: servlets, JSP, tags, and more. In my personal opinion, at the moment there is no special sense to donate it, as the web UI is increasingly written on something like RESTful + ExtJS / RIA, and Sun's traditional web technologies like JSP are becoming less popular.
- Sun Certified Business Component Developer (SCBCD) - business component development - i.e. mostly EJBs, as well as some JNDI, JMS, transactions, security issues.
- Sun Certified Developer For Java Web Services (SCDJWS) - Web services and everything related to them.
- Sun Certified Mobile Application Developer (SCMAD) - for those who work in the difficult field of J2ME.
- Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA) - a kind of peak that many strive for. Architect (I stress, this is not a developer certificate) J2EE.
Personally, I passed (and passed) two of them - SCJP and SCBCD, I would like to share some of my thoughts.
You can register for certification in two ways - with the help of the company where you work, or independently.
In the first case, everything is simple - if the company encourages its employees to undergo certification, then usually you can come to the HR manager and tell him about your desire to be certified. In this case, the company usually pays for the certification itself (although at the peak of the crisis, many companies, encouraging employees to undergo certification, offered to pay for them from their own pockets).
Then you give him a copy of your passport, say what certification, when, and in which testing center you want to take. Then, on the right day, you come to the testing center and pass the exam. If you have passed it successfully - in a few weeks (or months if you are not lucky), a package will be sent in the mail (usually to the company’s address) containing a congratulatory letter from the Sun certification program department, the certificate itself (a piece of thick paper paper with inscriptions and stamps), a badge with the name of the certification passed and a plastic card (such as a business card) with personal information and again the name of the certification.
If you want to pass certification completely independently, you have a little bureaucratic fuss.
I will say right away that I myself was handing over version 5.0.
In a nutshell - an exam in the form of a test, now there are 60 questions (when I passed, there were 72), in order to pass, you must answer correctly to 35 (earlier, respectively, there were proportionally more). Those. in normal preparation, it is more than realistic to pass. However, in the company where I work, there were cases when experienced programmers failed this exam, if they relied only on their knowledge and experience, and completely neglected the preparation.
rsdn.ru/article/java/scjp_article.xml is a great article, long, but very fluently covers so many moments of the language. Covers not all of what is on the exam, but in every way I recommend to read, for consolidation, and as a last-minute-check-list.
Here I just want to mention one thing that some miss. Exam is given in English. Those. requires an average knowledge of grammar, general vocabulary, and vocabulary in the field of programming (a vocabulary is available on the exam, but only a paper one, and if you search for a word from time to time in the dictionary, then this can be a lot of time and nerves. A good test here is Prepare for English books / articles. If you can read them without turning to a dictionary every couple of minutes, your level of English is more than enough to pass the exam.
I personally prepared from the SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055) (http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Programmer-Study-310-055-Certification/dp/0072253606). According to my feelings, it is quite enough.
Now about exam simulators. In my opinion, it’s not particularly necessary for this particular certificate - I didn’t open any of them myself, and I passed them quite well (80%). But if you want - www.whizlabs.com is always at your service. I see no point in buying, you can solve free mock-up.
A few points:
- It is better to leave early to be on the spot for 40-50 minutes, some employees of certification centers react painfully if the candidate arrives later than 30 minutes before the start.
- Please note that it is impossible to use phones, PDAs and other things on the exam (usually center employees leave you alone, but it’s better not to risk and cheat).
- Before starting the exam, I strongly advise you to do two things. The first is to ask studio headphones just in case. Sometimes an exam is taken in a room where there are several outsiders who are discussing something loudly, this makes it hard to concentrate (it depends on where and at which CA you pass). The second is to check that the monitor is not illuminated by the sun from the window. It is not always immediately noticeable, but after one and a half or two hours the eyes really get tired.
- At the exam, carefully check where in the condition the question is posed with negation, and where not. The simplest thing that many fall upon.
I prepared for this exam more diligently, about a month (as a result I passed by 90%). Partly because I paid for it from my own pocket, partly because I didn’t have a lot of practice in EJB 3.0 before.
Useful links:
java.boot.by/scbcd5-guide - almost all my friends who passed this exam prepared for this book. The advantages are that it is written in general easier than the official specification. I highly recommend reading from cover to cover once, and then flipping through it again.
faq.javaranch.com/content/bcd5_notes.txt - useful last minute notes. Many subtleties that you need to know in a concise summary.
www.coderanch.com/forums/f-70/EJB-Certification-SCBCD - an excellent forum in general, and for the delivery of certificates in particular. You can talk with those who have passed, find out their feelings, ask questions. The only serious limitation is strictly forbidden to ask and post "real" questions from the exam itself.
faq.javaranch.com/java/ScbcdLinks - many useful links in one place.
In the process of preparation, I came across the fact that recently it has become extremely difficult to find on the Web ... mm ... complete and free versions of simulators for this exam. Therefore, I decided for myself not to spend money on a full simulator, but to solve several trial ones.
Practice has confirmed that this is the normal approach to pass the exam with a comfortable margin of safety.
Feels like - EGE. USE in its philosophy. To pass on a high percentage - you do not need to have much experience writing applications (although
some experience is of course necessary), but it is absolutely necessary to read the specifications, JavaDoc, forums, and remember a bunch of subtleties.
Spent time, spent strength, spent time. Got satisfaction? Yes. And therefore pleased. If someone thinks about passing some kind of certification, I will give advice as often as I experience.
He himself has so far decided to concentrate fully in practice, and in the long term - the unconquered top of the SCEA certificate, which one day you definitely want to take, looms.
The author is not me, but comrade Zorkus , just like last time .Invite did not get, but labor comrades do not give up. :)
To some extent I would like to fill the gap with this article. Under the cut - my opinion on the issue - to pass or not to pass certification, a brief overview of Java certifications, as well as personal experience and feelings from registering, preparing and submitting Java certifications SCJP and SCBCD.
Certification - why does it need a Java programmer?
In the beginning, someone might ask - why should I (I'm considering Java programmers here) generally need to pass some kind of certification?
I have no definite answer. I saw employers who treated them almost with trepidation, and others who treated them as useless pieces of paper (whose owners unreasonably demand higher wages for themselves, etc.). I also know excellent signors and architects who do not have a single certificate, as, indeed, even a university education (yes!).
For me, the benefits are as follows:
Stimulates the study / systematize knowledge of some technology.
It often happens with me that I want to bury myself in some kind of technology, but I don’t want to do it with swoops and fits and starts, but it is a pity to allocate a lot of time for this, it just does not work. But when I registered for certification for a certain day and you know that certification - in three weeks - it helps to concentrate and find time. It also helps to concentrate here that I really do not want to fail the certification - firstly, it is insulting for the time and effort spent (although there is any benefit from them anyway), secondly, if you passed the paid certificate at the company's expense, then how then to look into the eyes of those who paid for your certification (and if you paid for a paid certificate from your own pocket, then you are sorry for your money).
By the way, some people generally believe that the best time to prepare and pass certification for some technology is just the “middle” of studying this technology. When there is already some knowledge, but there is still a lot to be mastered, and I want to master, and the first ardor is already cooling. Here certification certifies it.
A number of certificates (for example, Sun-ovsky SCJD) tests the ability to develop real-world applications, and not just obstinacy and good memory.
Certificates are just nice to have. It's nice because you know that you were able to take it and pass it, while many didn’t have enough for this purpose (for whom focus and obstinacy, for whom luck, and for whom banal knowledge of the subject).
Certificates, whatever you say, are still taken into account by many companies (in Java they are welcome, and some employers insistently ask them, for those whose bread is Oracle and Cisco, I think certificates are often more important than higher education diplomas). An interesting point is that some employers look at certificates only as a guarantee for a certain level of a specialist in a certain field, but some of them also look at the fact that a person passes them. Those. in their opinion, the fact that a person passes certification certifies in itself about his focus and ability to set goals for himself and to achieve them.
')
Certifications in the Java world
If we talk about Java certificates, then they can be divided into two groups.
The first is Sun's certification tree.
www.sun.com/training/certification/java/index.xml - in all its glory.
The second is all sorts of third-party paid and free certification. Of the serious ones, BrainBench comes to mind (http://www.brainbench.com/), others I would say are much less accounted for. In general, in general, in my opinion, certificates from Sun have significantly more weight for employers.
Therefore, they will be discussed.
Sun offers the following certification levels -
- Sun Certified Java Associate (SCJA) - shows that you know what Java is and what it is eaten with. Literally - "... that you have a basic set of knowledge that allows you to start a career as a developer of software applications or a project manager for developing a software product based on Java technology." This certificate is not required to pass the rest, and therefore very few people pass it (in my experience and feelings) (at least in Russia).
- Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) - Shows knowledge of the language, standard libraries (java.io, java.util, java.lang), platforms (how to compile from the command line, how to build a .class-file or jar, use the classpath), some knowledge of the work of the JVM (garbage collection, finalize, etc.). Required for passing more powerful certificates.
- Sun Certified Java Developer (SCJD) - a certificate showing practical development skills (that is, an exam not in the form of a test, but in writing an application) on the J2SE platform. Swing, Standard IO, multithreading / RMI. Usually those who write desktop standalone – applications or fat clients (which are often written using JNLP) hand over.
- Sun Certified Web Component Developer (SCWCD) ​​- respectively for web developers: servlets, JSP, tags, and more. In my personal opinion, at the moment there is no special sense to donate it, as the web UI is increasingly written on something like RESTful + ExtJS / RIA, and Sun's traditional web technologies like JSP are becoming less popular.
- Sun Certified Business Component Developer (SCBCD) - business component development - i.e. mostly EJBs, as well as some JNDI, JMS, transactions, security issues.
- Sun Certified Developer For Java Web Services (SCDJWS) - Web services and everything related to them.
- Sun Certified Mobile Application Developer (SCMAD) - for those who work in the difficult field of J2ME.
- Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA) - a kind of peak that many strive for. Architect (I stress, this is not a developer certificate) J2EE.
Personally, I passed (and passed) two of them - SCJP and SCBCD, I would like to share some of my thoughts.
Registration for certification, payment, etc.
You can register for certification in two ways - with the help of the company where you work, or independently.
In the first case, everything is simple - if the company encourages its employees to undergo certification, then usually you can come to the HR manager and tell him about your desire to be certified. In this case, the company usually pays for the certification itself (although at the peak of the crisis, many companies, encouraging employees to undergo certification, offered to pay for them from their own pockets).
Then you give him a copy of your passport, say what certification, when, and in which testing center you want to take. Then, on the right day, you come to the testing center and pass the exam. If you have passed it successfully - in a few weeks (or months if you are not lucky), a package will be sent in the mail (usually to the company’s address) containing a congratulatory letter from the Sun certification program department, the certificate itself (a piece of thick paper paper with inscriptions and stamps), a badge with the name of the certification passed and a plastic card (such as a business card) with personal information and again the name of the certification.
If you want to pass certification completely independently, you have a little bureaucratic fuss.
- Find the Prometric network testing center nearest you (http://www.prometric.com/) that certifies the certification you want to pass. Personally, I passed in the centers of two companies - IT Academy and SoftLine. Write them a letter saying that you want to pass such and such certification at about this time (“I would like to pass the SCJP at the end of May-June”) to make sure that they do not have events like corporate trainings and so on.
- If this is all right, they will tell you that you need to pay for a voucher for certificates from a vendor (Sun Microsystems). Write a letter to the Sun representative office in Russia, say that you want to buy a voucher. They tell you the coordinates of the account to which you want to transfer money. You make a transfer, scan a check issued in the savings bank and send them a scan.
- In a few days, when they receive your money, they will register a voucher with you and give it a number. The voucher itself (paper) will come in a few days by mail (it is better to inform in advance that you need a paper voucher, some testing centers require such).
- Contact the testing center, tell them the voucher number, and agree with them about the date of the exam.
SCJP - preparation
I will say right away that I myself was handing over version 5.0.
In a nutshell - an exam in the form of a test, now there are 60 questions (when I passed, there were 72), in order to pass, you must answer correctly to 35 (earlier, respectively, there were proportionally more). Those. in normal preparation, it is more than realistic to pass. However, in the company where I work, there were cases when experienced programmers failed this exam, if they relied only on their knowledge and experience, and completely neglected the preparation.
rsdn.ru/article/java/scjp_article.xml is a great article, long, but very fluently covers so many moments of the language. Covers not all of what is on the exam, but in every way I recommend to read, for consolidation, and as a last-minute-check-list.
Here I just want to mention one thing that some miss. Exam is given in English. Those. requires an average knowledge of grammar, general vocabulary, and vocabulary in the field of programming (a vocabulary is available on the exam, but only a paper one, and if you search for a word from time to time in the dictionary, then this can be a lot of time and nerves. A good test here is Prepare for English books / articles. If you can read them without turning to a dictionary every couple of minutes, your level of English is more than enough to pass the exam.
I personally prepared from the SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055) (http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Programmer-Study-310-055-Certification/dp/0072253606). According to my feelings, it is quite enough.
Now about exam simulators. In my opinion, it’s not particularly necessary for this particular certificate - I didn’t open any of them myself, and I passed them quite well (80%). But if you want - www.whizlabs.com is always at your service. I see no point in buying, you can solve free mock-up.
SCJP - surrender
A few points:
- It is better to leave early to be on the spot for 40-50 minutes, some employees of certification centers react painfully if the candidate arrives later than 30 minutes before the start.
- Please note that it is impossible to use phones, PDAs and other things on the exam (usually center employees leave you alone, but it’s better not to risk and cheat).
- Before starting the exam, I strongly advise you to do two things. The first is to ask studio headphones just in case. Sometimes an exam is taken in a room where there are several outsiders who are discussing something loudly, this makes it hard to concentrate (it depends on where and at which CA you pass). The second is to check that the monitor is not illuminated by the sun from the window. It is not always immediately noticeable, but after one and a half or two hours the eyes really get tired.
- At the exam, carefully check where in the condition the question is posed with negation, and where not. The simplest thing that many fall upon.
SCBCD - preparation
I prepared for this exam more diligently, about a month (as a result I passed by 90%). Partly because I paid for it from my own pocket, partly because I didn’t have a lot of practice in EJB 3.0 before.
Useful links:
java.boot.by/scbcd5-guide - almost all my friends who passed this exam prepared for this book. The advantages are that it is written in general easier than the official specification. I highly recommend reading from cover to cover once, and then flipping through it again.
faq.javaranch.com/content/bcd5_notes.txt - useful last minute notes. Many subtleties that you need to know in a concise summary.
www.coderanch.com/forums/f-70/EJB-Certification-SCBCD - an excellent forum in general, and for the delivery of certificates in particular. You can talk with those who have passed, find out their feelings, ask questions. The only serious limitation is strictly forbidden to ask and post "real" questions from the exam itself.
faq.javaranch.com/java/ScbcdLinks - many useful links in one place.
In the process of preparation, I came across the fact that recently it has become extremely difficult to find on the Web ... mm ... complete and free versions of simulators for this exam. Therefore, I decided for myself not to spend money on a full simulator, but to solve several trial ones.
Practice has confirmed that this is the normal approach to pass the exam with a comfortable margin of safety.
SCBCD - change
Feels like - EGE. USE in its philosophy. To pass on a high percentage - you do not need to have much experience writing applications (although
some experience is of course necessary), but it is absolutely necessary to read the specifications, JavaDoc, forums, and remember a bunch of subtleties.
Conclusion
Spent time, spent strength, spent time. Got satisfaction? Yes. And therefore pleased. If someone thinks about passing some kind of certification, I will give advice as often as I experience.
He himself has so far decided to concentrate fully in practice, and in the long term - the unconquered top of the SCEA certificate, which one day you definitely want to take, looms.
The author is not me, but comrade Zorkus , just like last time .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/84405/
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