I cleared IBM websphere Portal application developer 5.1 certification with 84%. Ya, I know that is not a very impressive score, but it is fine. I'm thinking whether i should take IBM websphere Portal admin exam (397) next? If anybody can guide me, you are welcome.
First of all congratulations on passing exam 399 and your score is really very good. I am also planning to appear for this exam next month and i have already started the preparation. I need some help in prepation. Could you please let me know the following as per your successful study for this exam.
1. I have read the JSR 168 specification and now pretty confident about the APIs mentioned.
2. Now i have started studying sg246681.pdf (IBM Rational Application Developer V6 Portlet Application Development and Portal Tools) and its pretty huge. Could you please point me which chapters/topics i need to concentrate from this to clear the exam successfully.
3. Any other study material you suggest.
4. Any website you used for Mock exams/practice.
I will really appreciate your help in this regards.
1. I was thorough with JSR 168 spec, you will get around 22 questions from here. No need to worry about IBM APIs at all, since no questions will be asked about IBM portlets.
2. From RAD 6.0 Infocenter concentrated on how to test, debug and profile portlets.
3. In sg246681.pdf, concentrated on chapters 8, 11, 12, 19, 20, 26, 30, 31.
4. Know the structure of themes and skins and how they can be customized. Portal 5.1 Infocenter should be good enough for this.
5. Portlet catalogs - This was worst part. I did not find any documentation for this. I did not find the site http://catalog.lotus.com/wps/portal/portal much user friendly. You will get 1 or 2 questions on this.
6. I didn't spend much time on struts and jsf portlets. My work knowledge helped me in sailing through.
7. For cooperative portlets, I had gone through info center and 0412_roy-CooperativeStandardPortlets.pdf.
8. For portlet service, I had gone through sg246681.pdf and 0509_chen-Tutorial-PortletService.pdf
9. Go through the Portal Admin console to get a feeling of where to find what
10. Try to get as many mock exam questions as possible. Most of them will repeat. Few questions can be got from Cameron's site.
One question regarding your comment < didn't spend much time on struts and jsf portlets. My work knowledge helped me in sailing through>
I dont have working knowledge of Struts and JSF portlets, so I was going through the sg246681.pdf for these. The chapters shows how to create struts and JSF portlets using RAD. DO i need to read these examples line by line and understand each screen shot of RAD, or just conceptual knowledge is OK.
I want to appear for this exam. Please guide me in appearing for the exam. Like from where we need to start preparing for the exam. Please suggest me sites for mock exams, etc., thanks in advance.
Hi Puneet, It all depends on your needs. If you are looking forward to implement portal solution as a developer/designer/architect then it is better to have some basic knowledge of strtus and jsf. Learning Struts and JSF will always help. But from certification aspect, you may skip them, ofcourse at the cost of 2-3 questions. Coming to the chapters in sg246681.pdf, it assumes that the reader knows the basic of struts in normal j2ee. Anyway, the questions I got in exam were not covered in that pdf. But my advice would be, if you have time, do a some hands on for struts and jsf portlets. May be that will postpone your certification date, but you will be getting the knowledge about what can be achieved through struts and jsf.
I have already posted how I prepared, in this same thread. But in short, be thorough with jsr 168 specs, go through RAD 6 infocenter for portlet debugging, go through sg246681.pdf, and most importantly solve as many mock exam questions as possible. In my opinion it is better to take developer exam before admin exam, since admin exam is bit tough.
Could you please suggest any websites for free mock questions/tests for IBM 399. I did the tests given in Cameron McKenzie website. Could you please suggest anything else for free questions other than Cameron McKenzie website.
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