I am new to Web Services development, and I would like to ask you experts if this certification is still compliant with the newer market standards. What you call the "newer market standards" (WSDL 2.0, SOAP 1.2, JAX-WS, etc) are not really standard yet and not mainstream either. So, I think it's better to let the dust settle down a little bit and let the first couple of bugs be corrected before engaging into risky paths... So, the current exam is still
testing the most widely deployed web services technologies to date.
Just to compare, SCBCD is currently outdated, since it is still covering EJB 2.0. 1. Just the fact that there are tons of EJB 2.0 applications out there justifies having this exam. At some point, industry will need people (and lots of them) to migrate those apps to the new EJB 3.0 standard.
2. A new exam for EJB 3.0 is under way. It'll be out at the beginning of next year.