Thank you all for your advice and answers. today I passed with 83%. I really thought I'd score higher, but I'm happy to have passed.
As customary, I'll shed some light on the exam.
First, I'd like to say that I went into the
test with one quest: "To objectivly decide which mock exam is most useful." I've taken ALL the mocks in the SCWCD links section. Now, I can say w/o bias that JWeb+ is the winner. I was able to answer almost 1/2 of the exam simply from remembering the explanations to questions in JWeb+. SCWCDWhiz is a good mock too, and DOES have MUCH better explanations. However, the questions are not as tricky as JWeb+. The actual exam difficulty is between JWeb+ and Eduardo Cobian's. Anand Chawla's mock falls in this range and can be considered a 'litmus test' for the real exam.
Anyway, onto the exam.....I won't waste your time trying to give vague statements like memorize web.xml or know design
patterns, cause that seems rather vague to me. When I was studying for the exam I scoured all the posts of those who had passed hoping to find someone that had posted a real question or similar question. I came to realize, it's more important to EARN it.
My best piece of advice is to use the notes of those who have already passed the exam. There is simply no need to 're-invent the wheel'.
Sure, you can read the API/specs. However, the actual exam basically covers only what's in the objectives (except for design patters). I used
Velmurugan's notes, which are quite comprehensive.
As many have said before, the exam is NOT hard. It does make you think and doubt your answers. Tricky is not a term I'd use to describe the exam, as much of it's straight-foward.
Ok, onto the exam, for real this time....
- Understand each and every element dealing with tags.
- Know the behavior/implementation/return types and interfaces dealing with tags.
- Know how to implement tags in
JSP pages.
It's funny, when I ready others talking about knowing tags, I thought to myself "boy these guys just don't get tags (no offense)". Well know I understand why!!! I thought I had learned about tags, but I should have put in more time.
Aside from the mind-boggling tag questions, everything else will be covered in the notes and JWeb+.
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Resources:
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Core
Servlets and JSP (read here and there)
Velmurugan's notes (read twice)
All mock exams(primarily JWeb+ [took 15 exams])
~2 months of study time @ 1-1.5 hrs a night.
I wish you all the best and again thanks for your help.
-PP