passed with 91%, whew...

[Barry West]

Originally purchased the SCWCD study kit book and read it from cover to cover, only to realize a new version of the exam was out (damn, should have checked sun's site before amazon!) so ended up reading HFS book as well. Was going to purchase one of the commercial prep exams, but decided not to.
Was surprised to see a few questions on dynamic attributes on the exam since this was not covered at all (except for a mention of it in a review question) in the HFS book. There were also a few questions on JNDI <env-entry> and the <ejb-local-ref> stuff which was covered very briefly in HFS so memorize what is in the book and then try to find a bit more info on the subject if you can. Based on my score, I suppose I must have guessed correctly as I did not have a clue for some of the dynamic attribute and ejb questions.

The drag and drop questions really suck as you have to drop the code fragments 'exactly' in the boxes which was a pain as the mouse in the testing centre I went to was garbage; probably wasted a couple minutes re-dragging stuff!

No big surprises otherwise. Scored only 72% on the HFS mock exam so you can draw your own conclusions based on that.

[Jose Esteban]

Congrats!!

Magic equation holds again:
HF score + 20% = Real exam score

[Jesus Angeles]

congrats!!!

[Jesus Angeles]

maybe reading 2 books helped dont u think?

[Barry West]

Although reading the 2 books might have helped a few things stick in the old brain a bit better, I wouldn't recommend it to others planning on writing the exam, stick with HFS.
As a sidenote, although HFS does a good job of covering the objectives and preparing you for the exam, I've got to say that I wasn't that impressed with the format. I can understand that the authors of this series are trying to spice up what is usually boring material by presenting it in a novel way, but I thought the book was much thicker than it needed to be due to the use of pictures, boxes, etc... and the associated extra whitespace. So, mentally it was an easier read that did not put you to sleep as fast as most java books, but physically it was a pain to handle on the bus where I was trying to read it!

[Paul Bourdeaux]

Hi jononku,

First, you may want to change your display name to match the Javaranch Naming Polocy so you can stay on the bartenders' good side!

Second, I agree that HFS&J is a rather bulky book (as are most of the HF books)... but I really think it is worth it! As a person who has both a psychology and computer science background, I really appreciate the efforts the authors put into making the book more of a teaching book as opposed to a reference book. Although I will conceed that everybody learns differently... there are some people that can pick up a technical manual and glean information from it with ease. But for the rest of us, HF is the way to go!

[Paul Bourdeaux]

Oh yeah, and congrates on the great score!

[Bert Bates]

congrats! that's a great score on a tough exam!

[Paul Bourdeaux]

Originally posted by Bert Bates:
congrats! that's a great score on a tough exam!

And we have you to thank (at least partially) for making it such a tough exam!

[S.L.Narayanan]

Congratz!!!
Gr8 Score

[Nicholas Cheung]

Well done!

I would say, SCWCD Exam Study Kit is an excellent book for SCWCD 1.3. It might not cover all objectives for SCWCD 1.4, but I believe the 2nd edition will cover the required objectives, and still, the new version is still highly recommended to SCWCD 1.4.

Stay tuned for the 2nd edition.

Nick

[Pooja Shankar]

jononku,
I would very well agree with you.I feel the same you felt while reading the book. Atleast somebody did say it.
Pooja.