1) There are many SCWCD study guides in the market like HFSJ and one by Deskmukh. How do you think your SCWCD Study Companion is a better book ? (We promise to buy your book if you can convince us)
HFSJ is a radically new way to present the exam objectives in a graphical form - but that doesn't necessarily suit everyone's style of learning (it also makes using the book as a reference somewhat difficult). With my book, I use clear and detailed explanations and diagrams so that by reading and understanding each paragraph you'll appreciate why things work as they do... It's a different, more traditional, approach to learning as you find in Kathy and Bert's J2SE study guide (of which I'm the proud owner of the 1.4 edition from years back). Also, the book has been through at least 4 proof-reading stages, so it should be free of major errors. Also there are 300+ exam-style questions in the book, and a subscription to an online mock exam (which will be online very soon I promise!).
Mostly the certification books cover only the exam objectives. Do you think authors should also cover topics that are useful in day today use ?
That depends on what you mean by "useful in day-to-day use" really... what one developer finds essential another can do without! In my book, I concentrate firstly on the exam objectives, but then fill out some of the areas for completeness - the most notable being JSTL (where all the core tags are listed, and those not on the exam marked as "Not an Exam Objective") and custom tags where we look at topics such as scripting variables, tag attributes and cooperating actions. I don't think it's appropriate to include in an exam text, which should concentrate on the core features, frameworks such as struts or
JSF (which is now standard in
Java EE 5). Remember: these frameworks have been built
using the core components and other standard Java technology, so by having a solid understanding of the basics you'll find it much easier to master the plethora of frameworks later on.