Hi,
Finally, cleared SCDJWS with 82%. I was surprised with my score. Thank you all Ranchers, especially. Peer, Wise, MZ
Prep time: 6 months.(4 months figuring out how and where to start)
Here is what I prepared and recommend for the exam in exactly the following order.
1. Blueprints complete.
2. RMH: Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I read UDDI introduction only.
3. Following chapters from Sun tutorial.
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/tutorial/doc/index.html Chapter 8 : Building Web Services with JAX-RPC
Chapter 9 :
SOAP with Attachments API for
Java Chapter 10 : Java API for XML Registries
Read every line. Try and work all the examples with Sun Application Server.
4. Chapter 14(handlers) from RMH
For JAXP, I trusted my past experience and little working knowledge on SAX, DOM, XSLT. I skipped JAXB completely and read it only from MZ quiz.
Optional: Try to read RMH chapters on JAXRPC, JAXR, JAXP(if you have time. I did not)
5. MZ Quiz : MUST. Most helpful. (Note to MZ, please try and improve the format. Answers can be given at the end of all questions)
6. Whizlabs : I am a great Whizlabs fan but it didn't help much for this exam. But gives you a good idea of what to expect. It is much harder than the real exam. (Note to whizlabs: THe new "improved" format of whizlabs sucks.Please go back to your old format. And concentrate more on quality of questions rather than presentation.)
7. Mock exams:
http://www.xyzws.com/scdjws.do?cat=scdjws&smenu=MOCK About the exam: It was not as difficult as I expected.
There were atleast 10+ questions on security. MZ Quiz was sufficient.
Many of the questions were scenario based and had some tricky options which were difficult to eliminate. My experience might have helped here.
Luckily there were not many questions on web.xml and webservices.xml.
Final advice. Don't waste too much time on preparation!!
All the best
Vasim