SCWCD 311-081 Beta Tester Counter

[Vijay S. Rathore]

Hi,
For the benefit of all other BETA testers please update this thread with your name and the next available counter with your experiences here if you have taken the exam.
Thanks in advance...
Vijay

[Vijay S. Rathore]

Counter No: 1
Name : Mathew Manoj
Experiences : Refer to thread
http://www.coderanch.com/t/167319/java-Web-Component-SCWCD/certification/Took-Test-today

Counter No: 2
Name : Mikalai Zaikin
Experiences : Refer to thread
http://www.coderanch.com/t/167319/java-Web-Component-SCWCD/certification/Took-Test-today

[Vijay S. Rathore]

Counter No: 3
Name : Hover Cheng
Experiences:
http://www.coderanch.com/t/167326/java-Web-Component-SCWCD/certification/Also-took-test-today

Come on guys, Help Others ...

[Vijay S. Rathore]

Counter No:4
Name : Kuo-Feng Sun
Experiences:
http://www.coderanch.com/t/167347/java-Web-Component-SCWCD/certification/ve-taken-Beta-exam

[Vijay S. Rathore]

Counter No: 5
Name : Mohamed Rabbani
Experiences:
http://www.coderanch.com/t/167350/java-Web-Component-SCWCD/certification/Taken-scwcd-beta-exam

[Vijay S. Rathore]

Counter No: 6
Name : Vijay S Rathore
Hi Renchers,
I know all of you are anxiously waiting big time to hear from people who already appeared for exam for the inputs.
I took the exam today (Sunday the 25th of Jan� 2004). Started at 10.a.m. and left the center at around 2.45p.m. It�s a 5-hour (300 minutes) exam. I was able to finish it in about 4.30 hrs. including the comments. One comment I could not mention in exam was, it still mentions that we have to answer based on Servlet 2.3 and JSP1.2 specs in the very beginning while explaining about the details of exam.
There were 163 questions. About 13 questions were drag drop, and most of them were about � (Sorry, I agreed in the exam not to disclose the details of specific questions).
But to give an idea about exam, I will mention the level of difficulty based on two criteria.
a.People who are not SCWCD certified.
It needs lot of time to prepare first for the basic concepts (SCWCD Exam study kit, has a very good coverage of basics. You can safely skip chapter 7 � Handling server side exceptions of this book)
b.People who are already SCWCD certified.
It will be a piece of cake if you focus mainly on EL implicit objects, EL operator sequence, JSTL type coercion, Tag file implementation and function implementation. (Make sure to at least practice them apart from reading). You have good links already available for EL and Tag files in javaranch.
For all of you, beware of Classic and Simple tags, there are questions using mix of both tags so be prepared for them.
I mainly focused on
SCWCD Exam kit, JSP2.0 (Listeners, Tag Files and Functions are excellent in this book)
Some sample chapters available on net for EL and Tag files
Servlet2.4 specs, JSP2.0 specs and JSTL1.1 (for core tags only)
(Hope I am within my limits of non-disclosure agreement).

Good luck to all of you.
Now I am handing over this thread to other ranchers, it anyone interested update this thread for other fellow ranchers ...

[Henry Zheng]

Thanks Vijay,
But I got a question here.

It will be a piece of cake if you focus mainly on EL implicit objects, EL operator sequence, JSTL type coercion, Tag file implementation and function implementation.

What do you mean by "EL operator sequence"? Do u mean the precedence of the operators?
And what is function implementation? Is that the java class version of tag handler?
thanks

[Yi Meng]

i've taken the test today.....

[Henry Zheng]

How was your experience,Yi Meng?

[Vijay S. Rathore]

Hi Henry Zheng,
Yes it's a typo, it should be Operator precedence. Function here means EL Functions (Objective 7.4).
Piece of cake means simple if you are already SCWCD certified, provided you focus on topics I mentioned.
Good Luck

[Henry Zheng]

Thanks Vijay!

Piece of cake means simple

Anyway, u think this need clarifying?

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi all,
Just back from the exam center.
The exam lasts for 300 minutes (i.e. 5 hours) with 163 Qs.
There are only 2 types of Qs: MC and Drag and Drop Qs.
As many people said, around 1/3 Qs are related to EL, JSTL and Custom Tag. The Qs are less challenge than I expected, but still these parts are the most challenging!
The Servlet part mainly similar to the old objectives, so I think people who got SCWCD 1.3 already may find no difficulty on them. For JSP parts, they are easy as well.
However, the design pattern Qs are very tricky, it is not that easy to identify a pattern for the given cases, so be careful.
Best luck for the exam.
Nick.

[Sivasundaram Umapathy]

Counter no : 8
Name : Sivasundaram Umapathy
Ciao folks.
I took the exam today in Milan,Italy.The exam had 163 questions and it was only a 4 hrs exam.I completed the first round of tour in 2 hrs.Then i did a review for incomplete and marked questions and again did a complete review of all the questions and finally completed with 5 mins to
spare.4 hrs is enough even if you took time to comment the questions then and there.
Now regarding the questions,
1. Servlets,JSP,Security,Web deployment,Filter,listeners portion were very easy.Nothing very complex and i was able to zap the section very fast
2. The real problem was in Taglibs,EL,JSTL,Usebean.They make you think a lot before arriving at the right answer.I suggest the ranchers to practice these concepts as theoretical knowledge alone isn't enough to face them.
I practiced a lot with EL and the JSTL(using the Jakarta Taglibs).Also J2EE 1.4 tutorial gives a good idea of EL,JSTL tags.
3. Design patterns was a nobrainer.Most of them were direct questions
Wish the very best for the fellow ranchers

[Beatrice Ng]

Hi all,
Just to share my SCWCD beta exam experience.
I gotten 14 drag and drop question, most of them are straight forward.
Tricky questions are on MCQs, multiple choices questions.
With the SCWCD book published by MANNING, and some mock exams online, I manage to pass the old SCWCD with 93%. But I think the book + the servlet and JSP specs are not sufficient to help you score in SCWCD beta.
However, in the new beta, it requires you to be really familiar with those JSTL and Tag classes. Whereas for EL, I find it easier than JSTL and Tags.
I even memorise all the web.xml elements one night before I go to test center, and it get pays off I can answer DD questions confidently.
For patterns, some are straightforward, some are not. I encountered two other patterns which are not included in the exam objectives.
Be prepared to read lotz of codes on Tags in the exam.
All the best for the people going for beta soon.
Hope my comments can do a little help for you

[Vedhas Pitkar]

Counter 10:
Vedhas Pitkar
My Beta exp

[Deepa Krishnan]

Hi friends,
I took the Beta exam today, I must say I was quite happy with the way the questions were framed.
In my opinion the exam was of intermediary level of difficulty[overall].
If you have done your homework well, you can really crack the test.
All the best to all who have yet to take the beta!!

[Dimple Kaushik]

I would rank the test as 7 ( 10 being toughest)
Make sure you didn't miss these...
1)All the life cycles (servlet, jsp, simpletag etc)
2)All web-app elements
3)jsp actions
4)JSP Documents
5)WAR, WEB-INF, META-INF
6)Web appln security
7)Listeners, events
Good Luck

[ravi janap]

Hi
I am planning to take Beta on 7th Feb. Could someone clarify on "drag and drop questions being given in the exam?
Thanks
Ravi

[michelle Wang]

I took the exam..........the drag and drop is something like arrange order . for example, ask u to list out the order of JSP code, the tag...

[Matic Petek]

Counter 11:
Name and Surname: Matic Petek
I study i use resources that other allready mention.

[Sumit Amar]

Took the beta on Feb 7, well it contained way too many questions about Tags and that spooked me.
DD, EL and JSTL questions were okay, few JSTL questions bugged me though. I had ignored the patterns part presuming it's the same as previous SCWCD, but I was wrong. Core SCWCD portion was a cakewalk. Also I found some syntactical mistakes in the drag and drop questions viz. <jsp aram> wasn't closed.
Beta days for SCWCD are over and now time is to look forward to SCMAD.
good luck to all people who took this exam !
S.

[Nauman Khan]

Hi All,
I didn't get much time for its preparation but despite this I took the exam on 6th Feb and I found some questions really hard to answer specially in design pattern and tag, but overall exam was really good and balance in each topic.
Regards,

[Jerry Liu]

With little preparation on the new topics, I took the beta on 2/6. It turned out there were LOTS of questions on EL and JSTL (30 each perhaps?). Anyway, I had my SCWCD cert a year ago and I only (sort of) intended to use this a an oppertunity to brush up my memory. I think I also helped other exam takers by lowering the "bar" for passing the beta exam

[Naina Srivastava]

Hi,
I took the beta test on 02/07. I passed the current SCWCD with 96% two weeks back. Did not get time to study new topics.
Thanks

[ravi janap]

I took the Beta on 7th Feb.
I am planning to take SCWCD 1.3 on 14th Feb.
Neha, congratulations on scoring such a high percentage. Could you let me know your mode of preparation for SCWCD 1.3? Any tips ?
I have studied Hanumant book and did JWebPlus Tests. On the average, I have scored 90% plus on all these tests. I found that SCWCD 1.4 BETA was a lot different from the JWebPlus test patterns.
-- Ravi

[Naina Srivastava]

Thanks Ravi!
If you have time, do the tests at j2eecertificate.com too.