Hi guys,
finally i cleared the exam. it was a Long preparation time ( 8th May 2006 to 27th January 2007 ). Why did i take so long ? because i work somewhere...! and i performed equally well there...bagged the star performer of the week award in the project...! well.. now lets get back to the point, my experience -
previous experience with servlets / jsp - none to start with i read a beginnners book by Marty Hall and Larry Brown, this took 16th Jan 2006 to May 2006. This made me realise what the heck a servlet is, did some hello world examples...got myself comfortable. Those who feel like reading some begineer's book i recommend the one from
www.murach.com. This book is really good and has everthing to make you familiar with the web technology.
once i did this, i purchaed the bible of WCD - HFSJ ( as they abbreviate here ). I purchased it on 8th May 2006. Used to read it any time - be it weekends, or weekdays in the morning or in the evening. The first round of head first was a bit hard - as i was reading the book i was feeling "All this is more than what i can chew" But slowly i got comfortable.
By october end i had finished reading it three times. With the third reading i appeared for the chapter tests from David Bridgewater and hanumant Deshmukh, this , i guess should help you practice more. Deshmukh's questions are easy, but Bridgewaters are really awesome, i recommend you all doing the chapter tests from these two books.
by December end, ii started reading it for the 4th time, this time, reading it very fast, just talking my way through the book...
Yes its true, the book is so fabulou that you dont read the test, instead you talk with the graphics...! every concept is explained like a "data flow diagram" ! the authors have really put their AI skills ( as they mention in their introduction ) to maximum use. As i was reading for the 4th time, i stared giving some online mocks, also started accumulating the 'specy' part of the exam...! by specy part i mean things like -
"order of listener notification - on startup and shutdown"
"c out, c redirect , c forTokens"
etc etc...!
By january start i started taking full length mocks, and started analysing the mistakes in a notebook. These mocks were accompnaied by a 6th super fast reading. I purchased the voucher on 20th Jan 2007 ( coincidentally, this is the day when i completed one successfull year @ the job ). scheduled the exam on 27th. in the week 20-27 i gave mocks, from enthware and whizlabs, and in the process came to know many specy things about the exam. I wanted to take a day off from the job on 25th, but due to work load could not do it...was running batch processes 2 days before the exam
on 26th i read hfsj for the 7th time
! took about 9hrs in total.
gave the whizlabs quiz, made ntoes of all exam bangs and some concpets which
the book mentions on the fly. then at about 11 (20hrs before the exam )
in the midnite i appeared for the much awaited HFSJ final mock, and got 71 in it !
I tell you guys, it was excruciating pain, to crack all those damn tough questions,,,and that too after a hectic week @ the job. the 20+ rule did work in my case also. i got 71 in hfsj mock, and got 91 in the final !
i could manage to sleep only for 2hrs, got up early, revised from fredrics notes., read the exam bangs and went for the exam.
the exam had a fair difficulty level. some questions were very straight forward. ...i used a time management strategy that i had followed for
SCJP.
thhe exam had really tough question on jsp:usebean. thos on design
patterns were easy..! questions on customs tag - finding the nested depth of tags, valid / invalid retun values from the methods..! got about 6 drag and drop questions. Either attempt them in the beginning or at end, this is because the anwers are reset, if you review them. i was a bit surprised that the exam had
container dependent questions. Questions are asked from every nook and corner of the book, even from the dumb question anwers..! so be preapred that you have burnt each and every verse of the bible ! questions on security were easy. had got 1 question on dynamic attributes...thanks bryan for your tutorial !
i didnt answer too many queries in the forum, but was continuously tracking the thnigs said by all people. it is here i learnt things like
1. the URL in the sendRedirect method should be first run through the
encodeRedirectURL method
2. why is $(pageContext.config.initParameter.parmater_name} is not
at all a way of reading the context param using EL.
hussssh !! i think it sufficient now ! this is my second certification...an d this is going to give me a solid plus point in my performance evaluation.
I am thinking to build a smaal web site of mine, where in i could apply all the baby concepts that this exam taught me.
My advice to people - "the HFSJ is sufficient, but keep yourself open to specy things that the mock exams teach. work smart, and not hard ! try to spend at least one hr daily. a person with no experience in servlwt / jsp can do it in 4months ! " Do some sample examples, i mean the brain childs that pop in your mind, when you read things. i did some for EL functions and custom tags, this helps you recall things well !
one more thing, i have maintained a txt file that has the scores of all the mocks that i appeared for. will be happy to forward it to the new people. if any one needs it - please drop in a mail at
niranjan_8712@yahoo.com
thanks a lot to - kathya sierra, bert bates, bryan basham ( for answering to my struts queries ) ! thanks to Srikant raghwan who helped me remember the table - activation / deactivation of EL !!
its done ! finally ! what next ??? well ... i think i will gor BCD ! but i heard that some new exam pattern is coming in effect in Feb 2007. does any one know about this !
i better stop now. will change my signature !
Niranjan Deshpande !
[ January 28, 2007: Message edited by: Niranjan Deshpande ]
[ January 28, 2007: Message edited by: Niranjan Deshpande ]
[ January 28, 2007: Message edited by: Niranjan Deshpande ]
[ January 28, 2007: Message edited by: Niranjan Deshpande ]