Information about OCPJWCD 6 / SCWCD 6 [CX-310-085]

[Piotr Nowicki]

Howdy Ranchers!

Because I'm very interested in passing the new JSP & Servlets which are parts of JEE 6, I suggest to treat one topic as a main one and gather all the information we have in one place. I've noticed that there are few topics related to the new exam (this, this and this one to name just a few).

So, let's sum up a few things:

1. Availability date
- We have an official Oracle beta exams site in which you can read that the exam will be (tentatively) available by February 28, 2011.
- At Oracle Certification blog you can read that the exam will be (also tentatively) available by March 31, 2011,
- At CertManager you can read that this exam will be Valid beginning 09/01/2011.

So, what's the approx. date of releasing the production version of exam? The one from Oracle Blog (31.03.2011) might be the most accurate, as the one on Oracle Beta Exams was changed recently from February 18 to February 28.

2. Exam topics
The accurate list of exam topics is unknown. There are only very general information about topics which you can find here. It is definitely not enough, as you can compare the topics with very well detailed ones for SCWCD 5 which you can find here.

You can say that it's fine - the new exam hasn't been published yet so they have time to update it. It could be like that, but take a look at the new Business Component exam topics which are the same general ones as in the new Servlets exam. And the business component exam is in production since 12th February...

3. Study guide
There are no books nor notes for new exam, so I guess we're stuck with SCWCD 5 books and studies of the specifications (EL, JSP, JSTL, Servlets).

If anyone knows a good source of a study material or a comprehensive comparison of JEE 5 web-tier with JEE 6, I guess it would be warmly welcomed :-)

4. Mock exams
I don't know about any mock exams for this exam, so if anyone have any link it would be great to share it with the rest.

5. Exam name
- At Oracle beta exams site you can read the name of the exam which is as follows:
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 JavaServer Pages and Servlet Developer Certified Expert Exam.
    The same name is in CertManager.
- At links you can read: Oracle Certified Professional, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 JavaServer Pages and Servlet Developer.
    The same name is in this Oracle News about new exam names (after the acquisition of Sun).

So I wonder what it will be really named... Is it Oracle Certified Professional or Oracle Certified Expert.

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Of course if any valid materials or relevant pieces of information will appear here, we should update the -- actually quite poor -- section of the new exam at https://coderanch.com/how-to/java/ScwcdLinks.

[Arvind Gangwar]

Hi,
Thanks you Pedro Kowalski, for sharing such a great info. Please share other info whenever you have related to exam preparation.
And can you share study material of SCWCD 5 exam, whichever you have with me.

In hope i will get such a great info regularly regarding exam preparation. I pay my Thank again.

[Piotr Nowicki]

Howdy Arvind!

This topic is supposed to be about new JSP and Servlets exam. For SCWCD 5 you have plenty already published and gathered information in JavaRanch - https://coderanch.com/how-to/java/ScwcdLinks#Scwcd5

Cheers!

[Matthew Raw]

Hi Pedro,

thank you for opening this thread. I'm very interested in this exam as well.

About the objectives: The exam topics on the Oracle site are very poor. I sent an email to Oracle with a suggestion to the team responsible for this exam, that they really should make it more concrete. We don't know which new Java EE 6 features will be required in which depth. I also wonder if Classic Tags will still be part of the exam. Therefore I suggest to everyone who is interested in this exam to write to Oracle (I think it's [e-mail]), maybe they will do it for us...
I read in one topic on JavaRanch from a person who attempted the beta exam, that there are plenty of questions on the new features - annotations, web fragments, asynchronous processing... Reportedly there are 70% of questions on the new features, the rest is what we should know for OCPWCD 5.

Regarding mock exams, I contacted Enthuware whether they will release exam simulator for this exam and they replied that they will provide a simulator after the exam will be in production for few weeks.

About the books, I hope that someone will write some good book soon, but for now, we are stuck to the specifications...

[Piotr Nowicki]

Howdy Rene!

I've sent a very similar mail to yours about 2 weeks ago and got a reply which... sent me back to the Beta Exam site. So I guess I can't say it was even a bit helpful...
Luckily, the Oracle Certification Blog is much more adequate and they in fact did replied to the questions I posted.

Regarding Exam date

Brandye Barrington wrote:Production exam has been delayed again - it should be released by the end of March. This change should go live on the website any day now. We apologize for the continued delays. We want to be sure that this exam is technically sound and valid before it is released into production.

Regarding Certification Name

Brandye Barrington wrote:The EE6 certifications are Expert not Professional - This has been fixed in the blog post (thanks for pointing this out).

Regarding Exam Topics

Brandye Barrington wrote:Currently, the topics on the web page are the only topics we have available for this exam. I am working with SMEs to see if we can provide more detailed topics.

[Matthew Raw]

Hi Pedro,

it is good news that it seems that they are working hardly on the exam and that there is a chance that there will be more detailed syllabus. May I ask - in the Oracle blog you mentioned that you are almost finished with preparation - how have you been preparing? Have you tried for example making small demos in eg. Tomcat 7 or Glassfish 3? I'm still working on the HFSJ book for OCPWCD 5 (now reading it the second time) and I'm waiting for some book or simulator (mock exam). May I ask - is it difficult to do, for example, asynchronous servlets? I just skimmed the Servlet 3.0 specification and it seems to me quite brief and concise regarding asynchronous servlets...

Thank you.

[Piotr Nowicki]

Rene - well, to tell you the truth, I've finished my preparation for the SCWCD 5, so now I'm facing the problem of learning the new stuff which comes with JEE 6. I've used some of the new annotations on my example projects, but didn't go into it any deeper. I know that there are few new concepts like web fragments or asynchronous servlets, but as I've seen, also many of the added annotations are just for DD simplification.

I will pursue to find a good source of information which will be built in "(Servlets + JSP + JSTL + EL) in JEE 5 vs JEE 6" style.

At this moment, I do hope that the main knowledge about the new SCWCD exam can be gathered by learning the basics which are also valid for old SCWCD exam :-)

By the way, for all my test code I've used Tomcat 7 to make sure that some information relevant for JEE 5 are still valid, and if I noticed any changes in behavior, I've studied the specification and noted it.

I want to pass this exam as soon as possible, to begin the preparation for new EJB's, WS and JPA, so I think I will not wait for any mock exams... I'm afraid that it may take more than few weeks for new mocks to be released... or maybe I'm just a prophet of doom? ;-)

It would be nice to gather more people who took the beta exam to share some information about the questions. Anyway, I also think that the numbers doesn't necessary have to be correct for the production exam. I mean, if on the beta exam there were 70% of new features and 30% of old ones, it doesn't mean that the new exam will be only about the new features.
I would rather say that they put so many new questions, because that's what they want to test - if they're properly formed and are not too difficult nor easy to answer. The old ones are still valid, and perhaps doesn't have to be tested once again in beta - Oracle/Sun knows these questions are good, because SCWCD 5 was in production for some time.

But, hey, that's just my opinion :-)

Cheers!

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Sorry, guys,

What's the difference between Oracle Certified Professional or Oracle Certified Expert ? Why it's so important ?

Thanks,
MZ

[Piotr Nowicki]

This, as well as different production dates, shows inaccurate data about the exams published by Oracle.

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Ok, I see what you mean.

Because there is another level - Master, and it's higher than others.

So, I was curious about levels of Professioanl and Expert.

regards,
MZ

[Piotr Nowicki]

Hmm, Mikalai, when you said about that, I begin to wonder - the professional ID cards sent by Oracle are silver, master IDs are gold, but... how the new (??) expert level will fit in this hierarchy? ;-)

Cheers!

[Matthew Raw]

Pedro Kowalski wrote:
It would be nice to gather more people who took the beta exam to share some information about the questions. Anyway, I also think that the numbers doesn't necessary have to be correct for the production exam. I mean, if on the beta exam there were 70% of new features and 30% of old ones, it doesn't mean that the new exam will be only about the new features.
I would rather say that they put so many new questions, because that's what they want to test - if they're properly formed and are not too difficult nor easy to answer. The old ones are still valid, and perhaps doesn't have to be tested once again in beta - Oracle/Sun knows these questions are good, because SCWCD 5 was in production for some time.

Pedro, I hope the same. IMHO it would not be reasonable to build the exam only on the new features of Java EE 6. There are plenty of topics/issues which are valid for both the older version and the newer version. And for example, the logic behind filters will be the same regardless of version - only in JEE6 one can declare the filters by annotations. And the same apply for the other annotations.

I think that it would be reasonable to do some simple demos with e.g. Tomcat 7 before taking the exam to test various possibilities. I tried to google some topics and there really are few tutorials for the new features.

[Piotr Nowicki]

Rene, remember that if you bump into some good tutorial, I would be obliged if you would post it here

[Matthew Raw]

Pedro Kowalski wrote:Rene, remember that if you bump into some good tutorial, I would be obliged if you would post it here

Good idea. These are some tutorials I found:
Asynchronous support: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-02-2009/jw-02-servlet3.html
Another asynchronous support: http://blogs.sun.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/asynchronous_support_in_servlet_3
Article on the new features: http://www.mastertheboss.com/java-ee-16-articles/241-servlet-30-on-jboss-as-6-tutorial.html
Another article: http://today.java.net/article/2008/10/08/introduction-servlet-30
Another general article: http://www.javabeat.net/articles/97-new-features-in-servlets-30-3.html

There are other tutorials which you can find when googling a while.

I hope that it should suffice to read thoroughly these tutorials and experiment with them in Tomcat 7 + refering to the specification. What seems most painful to me now is the asynchronous programming - I can imagine a whole big chapter in HFSJ on this topics with all the pitfalls, but this is of course not available yet.

[Sid Singh]

Rene Puchinger wrote:

Pedro Kowalski wrote:Rene, remember that if you bump into some good tutorial, I would be obliged if you would post it here

Good idea. These are some tutorials I found:
Asynchronous support: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-02-2009/jw-02-servlet3.html
Another asynchronous support: http://blogs.sun.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/asynchronous_support_in_servlet_3
Article on the new features: http://www.mastertheboss.com/java-ee-16-articles/241-servlet-30-on-jboss-as-6-tutorial.html
Another article: http://today.java.net/article/2008/10/08/introduction-servlet-30
Another general article: http://www.javabeat.net/articles/97-new-features-in-servlets-30-3.html

There are other tutorials which you can find when googling a while.

I hope that it should suffice to read thoroughly these tutorials and experiment with them in Tomcat 7 + refering to the specification. What seems most painful to me now is the asynchronous programming - I can imagine a whole big chapter in HFSJ on this topics with all the pitfalls, but this is of course not available yet.

Hi Rene and Pedro,

Nice info you have posted over here. Iam also currently preparing for the exam and trying out the code in Tomcat 7. Waiting for the new version of exam so as to get an updates study material.
Thanks for the links you have posted over here.

[Piotr Nowicki]

Oh, and I did forgot to say that in "SCWCD Study Companion" Second Edition by Charles Lyons, there are two chapters that talks about new features (after SCWCD). They're quite short but they talks about Servlets 2.5, JSP 2.1 and EL 2.1. Not exactly what we need for JEE 6 exam, but always a bit closer to it :-)

There are some nice information about deferred expressions in EL and method invocations (I'm not even sure if the former will be on the exam...)

[Piotr Nowicki]

I've asked once again about the exam topics at http://blogs.oracle.com/certification and here is the reply:

Brandye Barrington wrote:I expect that more in-depth topics will be posted on the exam pages for EJB and JSP soon. We are awaiting the exam development team to finalize those topics now.

By the way, I asked about the Java Server Faces exam which was posted on Oracle Beta Exam site but has been removed and is not published anymore. Here is the answer:

Brandye Barrington wrote:Regarding the JSF exam, it is still in development. It was posted because we thought we had a production date for the beta exam but the exam ran into some issues, so we had to remove it. You can expect to see this beta exam show back up sometime in the future.

Rene - did you buy the Enthuware exams for JEE 5?

Also, watch out for any sources of information regarding JEE 6 which are older than 2009. As far as I remember, the spec was published near the end of 2009, so some materials which were written before this time can be based on non-final versions of the specification.

Cheers!

[Matthew Raw]

Pedro, thanks for posting these good news. Because we can expect the exam topics soon, it is very probable that there will be an update of the book by Charles Lyons (I asked him about whether he will rewrite the book for the new exam and he replied that he wants, but only after the objectives will be specified in more detail).
Yes, I bought the Enthuware for JEE 5, but haven't taken any test yet - now I read the Servlet 3.0 specifications and I'm very enthusiastic about it. I experiment in Eclipse Helios, which has fine support for Tomcat 7.0 (although I rather use NetBeans for my own programming and IDEA at work) and it is very quick and pleasant to create new servlets or filters with proper annotations, so one is not bored by deploying the whole web-app using only Notepad and Total Commander.

I also started to create my own quiz focused only on the new Servlet 3.0 features, for my own learning purposes. I want to create about 30 or so questions aimed directly on web fragments, asynchronous processing and annotations (now I have about 20 questions complete). I wonder if I should make it available for public - maybe it would help somebody, or maybe that the quiz would not be good at all

[Piotr Nowicki]

Ok, so I guess I'll buy the Enthuware too, but solve it when the exam will be in production phase to make sure I'll have a fresh memory of the material just before taking the exam :-)

I'm also reading the specs right now.

The idea of quiz or any kind of questions bank about the new exam topics is very good.
I would gladly contribute and I think this should go public!

Cheers!

Pedro

Edit: Rene, how about we'll create a Servlets 3.0 new features wiki site here on javaranch? It could be a starting point for the questions bank.

[Matthew Raw]

Hi Pedro, great idea - do you know how to create such a wiki site? I will write you a PM about the quiz.

[Piotr Nowicki]

Some news - Oracle Beta Exam page has been slightly updated.

There is a approximately production exam date set to March 11, 2011.
However, you cannot register for this exam at Prometric. The state of the exam is not updated and it's still in post-beta phase.

Cheers!

[Piotr Nowicki]

And there we have it! More detailed exam topics has been published at Oracle site.

Below it's the copy (in case of... argh... I don't know - it's just good to have a copy ;-)

Introduction to Java Servlets
[ ] Describe web applications, CGI, and the role of Java
[ ] Describe benefits of Java servlet technology
[ ] Create a simple Java Servlet
[ ] Define three-tier architecture
[ ] Define Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture

Introduction to Java Server Pages
[ ] Describe why Servlets are not the whole solution
[ ] Describe essentials of JSPs
[ ] Understand the fundamentals and reasons for MVC architecture

Implementing an MVC Design
[ ] Code a controller using a servlet
[ ] Code a view using a JSP
[ ] Forward control from a servlet to a JSP
[ ] Understand fundamentals of EL
[ ] Implement a simple MVC system

The servlet's environment
[ ] Understand more details of the HTTP protocol
[ ] Understand fundamentals of HTML forms
[ ] Understand fundamentals of the HttpServlet and related APIs
[ ] Write code that manages client sessions and cookies

Container facilities for servlets and JSPs
[ ] Understand the purpose and structure of deployment descriptors
[ ] Control context root and servlet mapping
[ ] Create and use context and init parameters
[ ] Use annotations to configure servlets

More view facilities
[ ] Understand the four data scopes
[ ] Understand and use EL dot and array access operators with Java Beans, arrays, and collections
[ ] Understand and use EL implicit objects
[ ] Create and use arithmetic expressions in EL
[ ] Identify the need for iteration and selection in the view, and use JSTL tags to address those needs

Developing JSP pages
[ ] Understand the origins, benefits, and weaknesses of JSPs
[ ] Describe JSP technology, the conversion of JSPs to servlets, and the lifecycle of JSPs
[ ] Understand JSP scripting elements, declarations and directives
[ ] Use JSP implicit variables
[ ] Understand and use jsp: tags

Developing JSP pages using custom tags
[ ] Relate the JSTL to common job roles in web application development and understand the use of tags in JSP development
[ ] Recognize correct syntax for tags
[ ] Configure a JSP to use tags from the JSTL
[ ] Write JSP code using several standard tags
[ ] List capabilities of JSTL tags/span>

More Controller facilities
[ ] Understand the servlet lifecycle
[ ] Describe and use more advanced elements of the servlet APIs
[ ] Create filters and use them in web applications

More options for the Model
[ ] Understand the roles of JDBC and JPA
[ ] Understand the many elements that make up the model
[ ] Understand fundamentals of connecting to a database using JDBC or JPA

Asynchronous web applications
[ ] Understand the interactions that are essential to asynchronous web pages
[ ] Understand the role of AJAX-style client side programming
[ ] Implement asynchronous servlets using the facilities of Java EE 6

Web application security
[ ] Understand the role of the container in security
[ ] Describe and implement four authentication models
[ ] Force the use of encryption between a web application and the client browser
[ ] Understand the role of JAAS in pluggable/extensible authentication for web applications

So if I get it correctly, the kinda new topics (not related strictly with the new Servlets) are:
- two about the JDBC and JPA from the "More options for the Model" section,
- "Understand the role of JAAS in pluggable/extensible authentication for web applications" from the "Web application security" section

EDIT: oh, yea, right... They've just copied the topics from their educational page... great...

[Saurabh Ku]

hi friends ......
am starting my preparation for SCWCD ...
hv heard that format of exam has been changed ..
i have purchased "head first servlets and jsp" 2nd edition
is that ok to start with it, i mean will it help me in new exam format ?
and please suggest what should i start after reading this book

thanks in advance

[Rohini Sahuji]

Great Work Pedro !! Great work Rene!!!

I truely appreciate your work!!!

Thanks for all upto date information collated at one place!!!

Thanks,

Rohini

[Paul Statham]

Hi Pedro,

Thanks for putting all of this information up. So what are the actual initials for this cert now? Is it OCEJEEJSPSD? Confused!

Also if you can't register for the exam with Prometric how do you register for the exam? I'm in the UK

Thanks,
Paul

[Piotr Nowicki]

Howdy Paul!

I've asked several questions at Oracle blog site and here is the answer:

Brandye Barrington wrote:Pedro, thank you for your patience on this exam. We thought it would be available earlier than this and apologize for the delay and for the date on the website that has not been updated. We expect this exam to be released in production by April 18.

Regards

And about the initials? Well, it's hard to say - I've also tried to create is just as you did, but it looks terryfing ;-) Personally, I just call it OCE JSP and Servlets exam.

You can't register for this exam with Prometric, because it's still not available (I check it at least twice a day for availability :-)

Regards!

[ayan basuu]

Hi Everyone,
can anybody please suggest at present which SCWCD exam should we take ? please suggest the exam code whether it is 310-081 or 310-082? Thanks in advance for the help.

[Piotr Nowicki]

I'm not sure what exams are you referring to. For what I know the JEE 6 SCWCD exam is 310-085 (or 311-085 as I've seen somewhere).

The older JEE 5 SCWCD exam is 310-083.

If you want to know which exam you should take (related with JEE 5 or JEE 6) it's the best to answer to yourself. I mean if in your workplace, you're working only with JEE 5 technologies or you don't want the uncertainty around the JEE 6 exam, take the 310-083.
If you want to learn newer technologies and you're not afraid of learning straight from the specification or lack of mock exams - take the JEE 6 one.

Cheers!

[ayan basuu]

Thanks Pedro for the early reply.
But I have passed the SCJP 1.5 and I need to go with the certification for SCWCD. There I found two numbers like 310-081 and 310-082. Hence a bit confused. As a web developer, which exam should I take. If you can out some light on the same this weill be great.

[Piotr Nowicki]

And what are the names of the 310-081 and 310-082 exams? I can't see them in Prometric exam section...

[Frits Walraven]

the 310-081 and 310-082 exams are the JEE1.4 exams

Regards,
Frits

[Piotr Nowicki]

Thanks Frits!

So these are quite old... I wouldn't go there if I were you :-)

[ayan basuu]

Thanks Frits and Pedro.
Is there any idea about the difference of course materials between JEE1.4 exam and scwcd 1.5. Since I am reading the 310-081 exam for the last few months. Please suggest.
Thanks,
Ayan

[Frits Walraven]

no there is no difference in specs, both use the JEE1.4 specs. The only difference is the way they ask questions on the exam. It is like the change in asking questions from SCJP4 to SCJP5 & SCJP6.

see also ScwcdLinks

Regards,
Frits

[Piotr Nowicki]

Howdy Ranchers!

I've just seen that the 310-085 exam (OCE JSP and Servlets JEE 6) is currently available at Prometric!

I think I'll take the exam on Monday, so I'll try to put as much info about this exam as I can.

Cheers!

[Frits Walraven]

Good luck

[Arvind Gangwar]

Best of Luck...

[Rohini Sahuji]

Finally!!! Its here!!!

All The very best Pedro!!!

[Rohini Shirpewar]

All the best Pedro! Looking forward to your feedback.. !

Rohini
OCPJP 6

[Piotr Nowicki]

I'm not superstitious so I can gladly say 'thanks guys' :-) Hope in Monday I'll also be in such a good mood ;-)