I have been a member of this forum for some time, reading posts and discussion topics but have not actually contributed to a great extent. I hope this post helps out my fellow ranchers:
Yesterday I was able to
pass SCDJWS with 72%. The passing score is still 42% and the total number of questions on the exam is 65.
Thanks go out to two outstanding contributors here on this forum:
Ivan Krizsan
for his
detailed and thorough notes with invaluable code examples. Ivan was able to cover the topics in more than adequate detail and his content could be used for a book
and
Mikalai Zaikin
for his
Study Guide with explanations that are easy to understand and give a great background and underlying description of concepts that I could not find elsewhere.
I think the contributions made by you two for this cert provide the solid starting foundation for any rancher attempting this cert. Kudos to the both of you and many many thanks!
Here was my exam experience:
There were a lot of questions about Endpoint Architecture giving scenarios on requirements of a system and then asking web service development approaches that would be most suitable. In my opinion, this constituted about one third of all the questions on the entire exam.
Contrary to other forum postings on this cert, in my case there were quite a few code snippets. Correctly identifying XML which adhered to an XML schema, method signatures of code that would have been generated from WSDLs, SAAJ coding to correctly add attachments to a
SOAP message, JAXR UDDI queries, a couple annotations in code snippets etc
There were quite a few questions on WSIT and WCF which I thought I would have been prepared to answer but it turns out I was not. Especially with regards to compatibility of data types between
Java and .NET (there was another code question here)
Of course the Basic Profile 1.1 should be studied in its entirety as there were numerous questions which related to this directly or indirectly. This should be known inside out!
There were a few questions pertaining to security and XML Signature and Encryption so read up on these topics.
Make sure you know UDDI and JAXR. There were quite a few questions relating to these, both theoretical and API related questions.
Ensure you know everything about WSDL 1.1, it's format, syntax, validation inside out especially with regards to adherence to the Basic Profile 1.1. There were surprisingly no questions on the WSDL component model.
Here was my preparation for the exam:
I prepared for this exam for 2 and a half months
I did not have a lot of experience in Web Services prior to writing the exam as I had only developed a couple, but I did have familiarity with the XML technologies which helped.
I read Ivan Krizsan's outstanding notesThis was followed by Mikalai Zaikin's Online Study Guide
I also read the following:
Basic Profile 1.1WSIT TutorialUDDI 2
Make sure you actually do the code examples from Ivan's notes. I think this helped me a lot in cementing the concepts and APIs that are involved in coding Web Services.
I took the
WGS-PREX-J230C mock exams from SUN which I think are the only ones currently out there for this exam. They were two exams each with 60 questions each. A couple of the questions on these mocks were extremely similar to the actual exam questions. They helped me to feel more confident before the exam and adequately cover the cert objectives. I would definitely recommend them. I would suggest to do the exams more than once to help cement the concepts.
This is a great cert and I am glad that I put the effort into doing it. It has a broad scope and encompasses so many technologies, but I think it would be exceptional on a resume to any potential employer! Thanks to the forum for your posts and good luck for those attempting this cert. It can seem overwhelming, but with commitment and perseverance it is certainly doable!
Cheers!
Great score !!!
