Dear all,
I passed the exam 141 yesterday, with not a very good score though. I got 68%. It took me two months to prepare for the exam. I didn't have any experience in XML or any other related technology. I found this forum very helpful. Many informative messages are already available on this forum, I would not like to reiterate the same, but I would still like to write a few points which might help those who are prepairing.
1. If just starting the preparation, try to read all the messages, specially written by those who have passed the exam.
2. Personally, I found Prof XML Second Edition book very good. I read the chapters very thoroughly.
3. Besides this book, I consulted - Professional XML Scehma and XSLT by O'Reilly. There are many advanced Schema questions in the exam.
4. I got 7-8 questions from
SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, XML signature and XML encryption.
5. zvon's tutotials are good. Try to go through those after reading the chapters. I also did XMLWiz mock trests but I think those tests were not very close to the actual
test. Actual exam focuses more on the conceptual knowldege. So good understanding of all the topics is required. But XMLWiz helped in the sense that you feel more confident after passing those exams and you get the feel of the exam as there are not many mock tests available for XML.
6. Overall if I rate the difficulty of 141 exam and
Java Programmer's exam on a 1 to 10 scale:
Exam 141 - 7
Java Programmer - 4
So those who are Certified Programmers will be able to judge the difficulty level.
7. The reasons for my low score are:
- I didn't do any practical work in XML
- Didn't do advanced topics in XML Schema
- Didn't have good ground work in SOAP, UDDI, XML signature, XML encryption.
Overall it was a good experience studying XML and all the related technologies and passing this exam is a good logical end to the efforts. Now I am planning to do some project using these technologies and then I would like to move on to Java Architect exam.
I would be seeing the messages in this forum for some more days so I would be happy to answer any questions to the best of my knowledge.
I made some very brief notes to be read on the last day before the exam. I am planning to publish the same on the forum, how can I do that?
At the end I would like to thank the organizers of Javaranch forum and all its members as this is definitely the best way to interact with other people who are prepairing and sharing information.
PS: Can anyone send me some information regarding CXE exam?
Thanks.
Vibha.
Certified Java Programmer
Certified Java Developer
Certified Developer - XML and Related Technologies