IBM Test 397

[Hiroshi Tominaga]

Hi,
Im going to take the ibm test 397 - IBM WebSphere Portal V5.1, Deployment and Administration. I dont have much time to study....like 3 weeks only. I would like you guys to help me with this. What should i study?....considering i dont have much time. I have read the suggestions on the ibm certification site, it seems that there are many topics to study but may be you can suggest me focus on the ones you consider the most important, also you may suggest the redbooks or other sources where i can learn what i need.

thanks,
best regards!

[Michael Rosenthal]

How was the test? Any suggestions on someone preparing to take it?

[Mahmoud Matouk]

Hi Guys,

I don't want to disappoint you, but the exam was really tough, I passed this exam on last Feb. I have 8 months hands-on experience in deployment and administration and also covered about 80% of the topics in exam objectives and I passed with only 65%.

The exam really is about hands-on experience, anything you did with your own hands you will answer it easily, but topics you just have read about will not be easy to answer.

So, I don't say that the exam is impossible but I think 3 weeks if you don't have solid hands-on experience is a very tight period.

And to prepare for it I recommend the infocenter (and nothing else), most of the exam questions were like copy-paste paragraphs from the infocenter, try to cover the objectives from infocenter.

The sample test also was a good assessment for me, there was no questions from the sample test in the real one, but the difficulty level was very close.

Good Luck
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SCJP, SCWCD, IBM 397

[Michael Rosenthal]

One more question then as I am taking it this week. The Section 1 Topic "Understanding installation options (e.g., archive, custom, and component). I have no idea what they mean. As far as I am concerned your options are

gui install (full/custom)
install with a response file

Do you know what the archive and component installation options mean?

[Mahmoud Matouk]

For this section I just studied the installation scenarios in infocenter e.g. installing on existing was with no sec, with sec disabled, with sec enabled, coexisting portals ..etc

and the advanced installation options like installing empty portal ..etc

as fas as I remember the questions in this section were not tricky, and the one I remember was about how to install empty portal (install.bat -W installPortletsSequence.active="false")

Good Luck in ur exam

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SCJP, SCWCD, IBM 397

[Michael Rosenthal]

I passed with 71% this morning. Test was as you said very difficult. I agree that hands on experience is needed as well as spending a lot of time on the InfoCenter website. I used that as my sole source of information. Thanks for your help.

[Mahmoud Matouk]

That is great Michael. Congratulations

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SCJP, SCWCD, IBM 397