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My SCWCD result as I promised: Well folk...

 
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...I passed!
Not a great score though (just 77%), but all glory be to God, who made even this possible.
Also,lots of thanks to you guys for all your help and moral support. Javaranch is certainly the best forum I have ever come across!
Throughout the day today, or rather yesterday as it is past midnight here in Karachi, I was so tense - read the whole day without being able to concentrate and gained nothing. Everything I had prepared seemed lost, and I was certain to fail. Then, half an hour before the exam, I pulled myself together and put all faith in our Creator, and went out to the Center.
I must say you guys had scared me out of my skin - with all that talk of how difficult the questions had become, the exam being more difficult than SCJP, etc., etc... Combine with this, the fact that I have had no experience with either servlets or JSPs and I'm a lousy student when it comes to exam prep.
For my exam prep., I did not even manage to read one book completely! Just skimmed through a few initial chapters of Jason Hunter's Java Servlet Programming, learned to run tomcat 3.2, and simply typed-in a few servlets from the book to get the hang of it. Apart from that, I studied from Wrox's Professional Java Server Programming that has about 6 chapters in all on servlets and JSPs - did not read one chapter from first to last line, but rather peeped here and there. Most of my servlets prep. was done from Miftah Khan's excellent notes. Had also downloaded Ken's and Michelle's notes but never got up to the point of reading them. Used all the mocks available free. FAILED in Anand Chawla's excellent mock and in SCWCD@Whiz' trial exam just a couple of days ago! Got good marks in JavaRanch's mock and SCWCD@whiz' quiz (both excellent, but quite easy), and managed to pass JWebPlus' mock with a mere 65%. JSPs, I studied entirely from wrox's book mentioned above, and I feel it's a great book. You just have to read 5 or 6 chapters, that's around 250 pages in all, and that's it! Looking at my score now, I feel if I had been able to read those chapters, start to end, a couple of times, along with Miftah's notes, I might have gained at least another 15% to 20%...but who knows!
To all those ranchers still waiting to take the exam, I'll just say:
"Come on folks, what are you waiting for! Waiting for Sun to change the format? If you feel you've done more prep than I did, just go get it! It's by far, the easiest exam from Sun you'll ever give... not at all comparable to SCJP..."
As for the real exam, it's difficult for me to remember how many questions of each objective there were, apart from a few, but I can assure you that the weightage was similar to that indicated in JWebPlus. There were exactly 4 questions on design patterns, of which I got three correct. Only one of them was apparently related to other patterns like front controller. all of them were quite simple, though. There were more questions on Sessions than there were on Contexts. Questions on JSPs (excluding Beans, Tags and Custom Tag Libraries) were not as numerous as I would have hoped for, and only one or two questions on Reusable Web Components. All in all, it was a pretty easy and straight-forward paper. Nothing as tricky as SCJP2 exam. Only one or two exhibits, and those too quite petite.
I would suggest the following minimalistic resource kit for anyone wishing to start preparing for the exam and getting gr8 marks too!:
1. Pro. Java Server Programming J2EE Edition, Volume 2 by Wrox P2P - chapters 7 thru 12
2. servlet and JSP specs - Only to verify for changes in servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2 specs
3. Miftah Khan's servlet study notes + JSP notes (only for design patterns)
4. JWeb+ (by far the best and closest to the real thing)
5. Anand Chawla's mock - if you can pass it in first go, you're in gr8 shape!
6. JavaRanch mock - use this as a starter.
7. Take active part in JavaRanch's SCWCD forum
8. Study intelligently - no need to cram, rather associate things, look for similarities. [Hint]Almost all methods with plural names return an Enumeration object.
9. About one month's prep time. You could reduce it to two weeks though!
10. Dont be afraid to take the plunge.
P.S. This plan is meant for certification purpose only. If you wish to gain expertise in developing gr8 web components, much more effort would be required.
Well folks this is about as honest and as short a report I could put forward for ya all!
Good luck to all of you!
P.S. I would like to once again thank all the ranchers who have directly, or indirectly helped me to achieve this landmark, viz. Chintan Rajyaguru, Ashik uzzaman, ersin eser, Guy Allard, Mark Spritzler, Axel Janssen, JiaPei Jen and Vamsidhar Chenepalli for your help and moral support. I would also like to thank Miftah Khan, Michelle and Ken for letting other ranchers share their invaluable resources and Anand Chawla and Carl and his team for their excellent mocks.
P.P.S. What certification should I pursue next, IBM-141 or IBM-483? How about VisualAge for Java 4.0 (that would earn me IBM Certified Solution Developer as I already am SCJP and OOAD(IBM-486)
[ February 08, 2002: Message edited by: Ijlal Jinnah ]
 
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congrats.

A warning about IBM VAJ exam: VAJ 4.0 will be the last release of that product (which I do not like). Now they push WebSphere Application designer, which is a better product. I will try IBM 488 (WebSphere and lots of EJB) , but you need >= 512 ram to install webSphere decently and installation process is . A bunch of admin-trainers of my company participated in the installation and they hate it even more than I do. So I found myself defending s.th., which I do not like.

Well talking about me and you passed the exam:
good luck for your future.
Axel
 
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Congrats. And thanks for all the advice. I think I will reduce my time and sign up right now. OK maybe in a few days.
Mark
 
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Congratulations Jinnah!! Great Score
And thanks for the encouragement.I needed it badly
All the best for the future!!
Manjunath
 
Ijlal Jinnah
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Thanks Mark, Axel.
Axel thanks for the invaluable info! I might have wasted my money on an obsolete product. Yes I cannot hope to install 512 mb ram on my computer or download WAS on a 33.6 k modem! How could I go about it? Another option is Oracle JDeveloper, which by the way is an alternate to VAJ on JCert and could earn me an Oracle Cert. Sol. Developer. Any news on that? How would you rate IBM-483?
 
Ijlal Jinnah
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Thanks Manju,
Your posting came later, so couldn't add you name previously.
 
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Congratulations.......
Nice score.Its depend on luck.
 
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Congrats dear Ijlal, very good job done man...
 
Axel Janssen
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Originally posted by Ijlal Jinnah:
Thanks Mark, Axel.
Axel thanks for the invaluable info! I might have wasted my money on an obsolete product. Yes I cannot hope to install 512 mb ram on my computer or download WAS on a 33.6 k modem! How could I go about it? Another option is Oracle JDeveloper, which by the way is an alternate to VAJ on JCert and could earn me an Oracle Cert. Sol. Developer. Any news on that? How would you rate IBM-483?


Hm. Ijlal. How should I know that??? You have OOAD(IBM-486), which is seen as very difficult. And all exams you mention seems to include EJBs. Ram has IBM 483. Maybe you ask him. Check if it is with EJB 2.0.

Think that its intelligent to do exams which includes tools, because my experience is, that manager value them high, but thats just my theory.
Ask yourself: The market you want to target is there more Oracle or more IBM. We know it does not matter that much, because its Java and the differences aren`t that big. But the person who decides in the company...
You know that sometimes its good to think about how do the decision-makers think. And hey this week I got good success in boosting my role in the company and open new perspectives. But: This is quicksand. Things change very fast. If one ONLY things about this psycho-strategical things, one gets crazy. Like the guys who are responsible for dot-com-bubble-hectic.
These things make me feel old and sad.
Axel
[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: Axel Janssen ]
 
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Ijlal, congratulations on passing the test and thank you for your valuable tips.
It would be helpful if you share your experience with the survery before the exam with us. Does the level of questions change depending on how you answer the survey?
I remember that when I gave SCJP, the survey came after the exam got over.
I guess that maybe many people tend to skip the survey after the exam. That could be the reason that SUN kept it before the exam.
I hope that this is the only reason behind it, as I am going to write the test next month!
Thanks in advance,
Prasanna.
 
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Congrats.
- satya
 
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Congrats!!
U'r an inspiration!!! Thanx for the tips..Also plz tell what to study for servlet container model, and wuld it help to cram most of the methods? where are the best design patterns?
take care
faiza
 
faiza haris
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Also
can you guide with the last week preparations? how did u remember the methods? u said u didnt code so howcome? good memory?
thanx
 
Ijlal Jinnah
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Dear Faiza, Jawwad, Ashik, Prasanna, Madhav,
Thanks a lot, all of you. This is the reason JavaRanch is no.1... You never are alone; it's like being surrounded by close friends!
Prasanna, I'll have to take the exam again to decide how the filling-in of the survey form affects the standard of the questions! Supposing you sent me a free voucher...
I just filled the information honestly, which, in my case turned out to be that I had very little experience with servlets and JSP, if any!
Faiza, there were exactly 5 questions on 'The Servlet Container Model', (I just checked the transcript). Nothing much, just the ordinary stuff. I think Miftah's notes and jweb+ should be ok, though if you are aiming for 90+, taking a deeper look at the API wont hurt.
Yes, I tried to cram the methods of the important classes/interfaces but failed to cram anything at all! I rather tried to associate methods and interfaces; thought which method should be where and why it should be there, and only concentrated on the important methods. I had the notion that Sun would be asking more about the primary methods, without which, one could not write a workable servlet. The idea goes like this...if you can't write and deploy a servlet, there is no point in knowing the 'lesser' ones that you'd be using later to fine-tune your servlet.
One of the best and the least original advice I can give you all is to work hard. Hard work always pays. Honestly, I am a lazy person and dont give as much to exam prep as most other people do. God has blessed me with quite a high IQ (tested by Mensa Int'l), and I depend much on it. In the end, it almost always happens that the one who has put in some real effort wins! I just manage to hang around the borders.
May you all score 100% in your exams!
 
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Congratulations Jinnah.
Anup Batra
 
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