Guidance regarding doing certification

[Jignesh Gohel]

Hi to all of you great people over there.
I am Java/J2EE developer and i have an total experience of 2+ years in the industry.The current skills i am exposed are Core Java,Servlets,JSP,JDBC,Spring -- beginner stage, Hibernate -- beginner stage.

I am planning for doing some certification.
I was going through the certifications offered by IBM and from SUN.
Reagarding SUN certifications i know that there are prerequisites ,starting with SCJP.But regarding IBM certifications are there any prerequisites??
Which one would be better to start with.And I opt for IBM then which IBM certification should i take first??

Please help me out in taking this decision by providing your valuable inputs.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[Niranjan Deshpande]

Try searching in the Software section of the link below -

http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/index.shtml

but, FYI, the very basic tests also need a SCJP

[Theodore Casser]

While I do like IBM's certifications, my personal opinion on them is that they're of limited value unless you are working for clients or an employer who are using IBM products.

While it is true that Sun's certifications (aside from SCJA, SCJP and SCEA) require you to pass the SCJP exam first, and that Sun is of course a vendor in their own right, the Sun exams are generally language-only - they don't cover a specific product from a specific manufacturer, but base themselves on the standard language alone. IBM's tests, on the other hand, touch mostly on the products from their line as appropriate (exams such as 142 (XML) notwithstanding) and address the technologies one uses with them as a part of the knowledge of their product.

Personally, I'd start with the Sun exams and work my way over towards vendor specific tests as the situation requires, but that's just my take on the matter.