I cleared the SCWCD with 89% last week !
Thanks for the authors of HFSJ and all members of JavaRanch !
I would like to share my learning path with all of us.
After graduation, I passed the SCJP. Now, I am an Analyst Programmer to develope internal web-based systems.
I have 2 years experience of webapp development as well as the Business Tier using J2EE, mainly built on the Servlet, Jsp and Apache Struts framework. After getting the SCBCD, I found it will be valuable either for my career or self-improvement, so I planned to get the SCWCD.
Study Duration:
- 2 months
Study Materials:
- HSFJ + JSP and Servlet Spec
- Using Tomcat to test, EL, jsp and standard actions
- Checking thread on JavaRanch
Based on my experience of webapp development, studying HSFJ is not a hard job. However, since I used Struts for development, I used extensively the Struts tag library. The topic like:
1. EL
2. Standard Action (e.g. <c:if> ..)
is quite harsh for me. I need to spend lots of time to learn the syntax of the standard tag, esp the <c: XXX>.
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On the other hand, I found the Design Pattern very easy, as I have already applied them in my applications. To be honest, studying the J2EE patterns from the
http://java.sun.com/blueprints/patterns/ is not a easy job for a beginner. I really appreciated the way that HSFJ used to introduce the J2EE patterns.
I think studying the SCWCD is very good both for beginner and experienced webapp developer. After reading HSFJ, I started to used Filters to handle
authentication checking and authorization (previously, I put those code on a Generic Struts Action class). I used EL to make the JSP tidy. Use the SimpleTag in webapp development...
Tips:
- Study the HSFB intensively, do all the mock.
- There must be place that you won't understanding during your reading, in most case, you can clear them from the /* JSP/Servlet Spec and JavaRanch */ !
- Keep checking the errata of HSFJ, this saves you lot of time.
- Using Tomcat to testing.
- PS: my final mock exams on HFSJ is 70%.
Good luck !
Enjoy your studying !