Hi Guys,
Let me begin by thanking this wonderful web-site (www.javaranch.com) which is a source of inspiration and information to anyone pursuing Sun certification exams.
My advice to every one is to first bookmark this link �
http://www.javaranch.com/scwcdlinks.jsp and then work from there. It has links to everything you need to get this certification including notes from wonderful people like Miftah Khan, Michelle, Ken etc. I went through Miftah's notes couple of time and love the way he has presented the
Servlet notes based on the exam objective. Only thing missing in the
JSP notes is information about IterationTag interface (not an oversight on his part as he mentions clearly at the beginning that this notes is based on JSP 1.1 specification and not on 1.2).
So the steps to take would be:
1. Read Servlet and JSP specification - If you have time and patience (I had neither) then this is the bible. Except for the design
pattern questions, all other answers are hidden in these specifications.
2. Read through the notes and revisit specifications, if you feel you need more information on any topic
3. Give some mock tests, if nothing else, it improves your ability to quickly spot error in lengthy code snippet type questions. Also when you make a mistake and then read the explanation for the correct answer, the lesson learned helps you more in clearing your concepts.
4. I hate to say this but you may have to memorize some names like those appearing in the deployment descriptor and also know which of them are mandatory and which of them are sub-elements of what etc. The reason being that Sun expects you to distinguish between various element names from the 5 or more options with very similar element names for ex. <error>, <error-page>, <web-resource-config>, <web-resource-collection> etc�I hope you get the picture. I think I lost out on at least 3 questions as I refused to mug those names and ultimately was confused while giving the
test. I may have lost out on answering 1 or 2 questions on listeners, again due to the confusion regarding correct name of listener confusion (not conceptual confusion).
5. I got about 5 fill-in-the-blanks type of question. So take care in typing correctly�you do not want to loose mark because of a hasty spelling mistake.
I got about 6 question on Design patterns (all correct answers were from those mentioned in the exam-objectives though the options had other design pattern names as well). I got 100% in this section but as others have mentioned you might get question based on other design patterns as well. These were not difficult and could be answered intuitively once you know the advantages of the different design patterns.
Also scored 100 % in topics like servlet model, handle server-side expectation, reusable web components, using custom tags besides design patterns.
Understand the implications of implementing SingleThreadModel..I got about 3 questions on this topic.
These are my 2 cents�.All the best to you all�.
Sudhir Bangera
SCJP2
SCWCD
SCOBP (Sun Certified On Bench Programmer) ----
ha ha ha
