Hi,
Just thought sharing my exam experience might be helpful for others who are preparing...
I have over 10 years exp in
Java world.
SCJP & SCBCD(
EJB 2.0) with excellent scores and good knowledge of Web tier technologies and web services (WSDL and Axis manly, never used JAX-WS API).
Started preparing for part 1 almost 6 weeks ago. Here is the sequence of events ....
1) Week1: Crash course of first 5 or 6 chapters of Cade's second edition. I found it easy so wanted to jump on next step....
2) Week2 to Week3: bought ePractiseLabs simulator. I set my goal to 80%. Very first attempt of tests, I was getting about 65 to 80% in tests. I failed in couple of java security related tests. In 2 to 3 weeks, I felt very comfortable in this simulator and I set goals to 90% and then I was at 95% in most of the questions.
Note: This simulator is good for refreshing the memories and judge your basic knowledge but I felt it's too easy and PLEASE do NOT expect any same question, usecase or business scenario in the real exam. The real exam for me was far beyond the standards of this simulator. But this simulator package boosted my confidence initially.
3) Week 4: Went thru the JEE tutorial real fast. I skipped details of
JSF, JPA & many other pages because of time constraint.
4) Week 5: By now, I had identified my weaknesses and reviewed all of them and prepared more on them. I did 10 sets of mock exams on Java Champ. I found them very useful but again nothing similar or same in the exam. The quality of
test questions in Java Champ is better than ePractizeLab and similar to Oracle's ePractise test. I scheduled my test after getting an avergae of 87% score in Java Champ.
5) Week 6: I bought Oracle's ePractise and scored 87% & 78% respectively. At this point, I was confident that I can clear the real exam.
I appeared in the real exam today:
1) Every single question, yes I mean every single question was tricky and above my expectation. All GoF
pattern questions were based on business scenarios. My test started with GoF and few questions checking the knowledge of 2 to 3 patterns within same question. So if you are confused about even a single statement or pattern, whole question is wrong. Most of the J2EE patterns were about the advantages & disadvantages of patterns.
No direct text matching from books.
2) Most of the security questions were related to drag and drop. The dragging and dropping was very tricky. I could not drop the first choice for almost 3 minutes. I thought, I am missing something or doing something wrong. It wasn't staying after dropping. Then, somehow I noticed, if you keep dragging in the area, in particular place, it changes the cursor and that's when you want to release the mouse -
3) Overall 80% questions were lengthy and in some cases, I really had no idea what the business scenario was talking about. I read them twice but when I saw the options, they did not match much

and I gave up in those questions.
4) I had gone thru almost 500 different set of questions in mock exams but trust me, I did not see even a single question appearing in the real exam from these mocks...
Most of the mock exams talk about standard ESB question. I was happy for few seconds while reading the question but when I saw the options, ESB was not available to pick so I picked JAX-WS.
5) Oracle's ePractise is complete waste of money for me.
Finally, I was able to get a score of 67% in real exam.