Gave the exam!

[Sathya Srinivasan]

Hi all,
I finally gave the exam a short while back. Here is my experience.
Background:
Did a few high-level UI programs. Read the specs. for about 15 days and wrote notes (available in a separate thread in JavaRanch).
Experience:
1. Exam is looooong. I kind of lost concentration after 2 hours. I took the exam in approx. 2 1/2 hours and reviewed for 5 mins. The idea of reviewing 169 questions was too daunting
2. Very few questions from the first 2 chapters, most of them are very easy. So you should not be spending too much time on these chapters. Just skim through the specs. and my notes (I found them relevant for these sections).
3. Questions were generally spread evenly between the other chapters. I believe I got lesser questions in MMAPI and Security, although that might not be true for everyone.
4. I found the WMA and Networking questions to be very thorough and significantly difficult. If you haven't done programming in those areas, it might be tough. Be sure to recognize various URL formats.
5. Game questions very tricky. I think it will be very useful if you have developed at least one game using Sprite and TiledLayer.
6. I got a lot of interesting questions about improving the performance of an application. Some were directly from the spec., and some were quite challenging.
7. Drag & Drop questions are very interesting and relatively easy. Almost all questions were dnd or multiple choice.
8. Security questions were reasonably tough. You should definitely concentrate on JAD and JAR declarations and how to use them in practice. Try to develop at least one signed suite. It will be very helpful.
9. Most of the questions had some sample code attached. You should really know the structure of MIDlet code to fair well in the exam.
10.There were some usual Sun Certification traps in the exam that you might have encountered in other exams like SCJP. Be prepared for them
Other Experience:
1. I found 2 mistakes overall in the exam. In one, the line number was wrong, and I forgot the other
2. There was one question that was out-of-topic. Dealt with PBP.
3. Some questions required knowledge of the EXACT syntax of APIs. I found this to be a bit unfair since most programmers tend to use the API documentation and IDE support for correct terms. I can accept this for some basic classes (like java.lang.*) but to expect the programmer to know the exact syntax of other packages is asking a bit too much. It tends to test your memory rather than your skill.
That said, all the best for your exams. As for mine, the results are supposed to come in 6-8 weeks. Whether I will pass or not, I have no clue. But till then,

[Vivek Viswanathan]

What about RMS ?
I have the exam in 12 hrs so I guess I wont be around to see your reply.

[Sathya Srinivasan]

There were a reasonable number of questions based on RMS. Some of them were straight-forward, but some were very tricky. Be sure to understand the shared and unshared RMS handling and also the use of various methods. Signature is very important.
Best wishes.

[Eduardo Rodrigues]

Hi Sathya
Everyone takes the same set of questions or am I wrong???
Cause you said "lots of RMS questions" but I can't remember of that questions!!!

Well, as you said :
Bye

[Sathya Srinivasan]

Well, when I say lots, it's roughly around 10-15, I guess. It was placed somewhere in the middle of the exam, by which time I was slowly losing my concentration and my sanity!!
I am not sure if the distribution of questions is the same for all the test takers or if it is slightly biased. I say this because I did not get too many questions on MMAPI but roughly 7 of the 11 chapters were equally distributed.

[Vivek Viswanathan]

Thanks for the quick reply.
I think I will just take some time off and play some computer games now, I guess I have prepared enough ...or I am rather board.

[Stephen Pride]

Originally posted by Sathya Srinivasan:
3. Some questions required knowledge of the EXACT syntax of APIs. I found this to be a bit unfair since most programmers tend to use the API documentation and IDE support for correct terms. I can accept this for some basic classes (like java.lang.*) but to expect the programmer to know the exact syntax of other packages is asking a bit too much. It tends to test your memory rather than your skill.

I can almost echo your exact experience of the exam, especially the above item. In a way, I understand why they are asking us to memorizing each and every API, but the list seems infinite - and, as you say, it is something that seems to test memory more than applied skill as a developer can easily peruse the javadocs to find the class they need. I think a generalization of API heirarchy would have been sufficient.
Regards,
Stephen