Good reasons to take the Exam?

[Rui Min]

Hi guys, I am thinking about taking the SCJD and I need to submit a request to the company for reimbursement.
However, i can not find a place where the advantages of this certification is described. I can not even find a short
list of the contents that are covered by the exam and how important they are. Can you provide me some info. about that?
I mean, how can this certification process help a java developer? thanks a lot! I did look at the oracle certification
page, it only tells the scale of the assignment.

[Roel De Nijs]

Did you have a look at Oracle's official OCMJD certification page?

[Rui Min]

Roel De Nijs wrote:Did you have a look at Oracle's official OCMJD certification page?

For example, I know, javadoc, design patters will be evaluated and these are very useful in our daily job. But where can i find a detailed description of this?

[Anayonkar Shivalkar]

Hi Rui Min,

The best places to look for this is:
1) Official OCMJD page
2) Monkhouse's book for SCJD (yeah, it is SCJD, not OCMJD, and it is for JSE 5, not JSE 6 or 7, but that doesn't make any difference. The book is extremely useful)
3) This forum
4) Roberto Perillo's SCJD paper

Now coming to the advantages of this certification:
1) I assume you are aware that you have to clear any version of SCJP or OCPJP to be eligible for this exam. So, in any probability, this will be your(at least) second certification, which shows that you are quite serious about Java.

2) Unlike SCJP/OCPJP, this certification does not simply relies on theoretical concepts. This certification shows that you understand basics of Java, and can independently handle a small project on your own, and you can write a code which works in networking environment, and you can write thread-safe code et-cetera.

3) If you like coding on your own, you are gonna enjoy this certification. Its real fun in reading the requirement document(i.e. assignment you'll get after you purchase the certification), thinking about how to implement a part, thinking about which design decision to take(and how to justify it during essay exam), making choices about where to put efforts and where not to put and so on.

For me, this is the certification I enjoyed the most out of all my SUN/Oracle certifications. However, please note that if your daily work is not in Core Java (and is in JEE etc.), then from technical perspective, this certification will not help you much during your work. However, its a nice experience to handle a project on your own.

I hope this helps.

[Rui Min]

uhmm...this is exactly what i wanted! Thank you very much!

[Anayonkar Shivalkar]

You are welcome.

[Jeffrey Tian]

I'd have planned to take this exam after OCPJP, but the mandatory courses make me hesitate.

[Cathal Mullan]

A Good reason to take the exam:

You have too much money in your bank account & want to spend it on mandatory courses

[Piyush Joshi]

very true...
I was also planning to get OCMJD certification, but checked the Oracle site and total price it would take is huge... Now I think it will be better to go for Java EE 6 certifications which do not require any mandatory training. But is this exam really worth spending this much money?

[Roel De Nijs]

Piyush Joshi wrote:But is this exam really worth spending this much money?

I have to say no, but that's of course just my opinion

[Cathal Mullan]

I got my Master Developer exam just before the introduction of the mandatory courses.

I have since decided that because of the introduction of mandatory course I don't want to program in Java any more & I'm switching to Python.

So it wasn't worth getting it for me, I wasted 3.5 months & £500 on this.

[Anayonkar Shivalkar]

Cathal Mullan wrote:I have since decided that because of the introduction of mandatory course I don't want to program in Java any more & I'm switching to Python.

Well, of course it is your decision, but I guess that changing technology field just because certifications are expensive seems a little odd to me.

Firstly, its not mandatory to be certified for being a good programmer (Java or any other language). I personally know some talented programmers/professionals who do not posses a single certification.

Secondly, there's no 'official' certification for languages like C/C++, yet those are the most used programming languages and thousands/millions of developers are working on it. None of those folks have a single certificate.

Last but not least, are you aware that those mandatory courses are required only for OCMJD and OCEA (Enterprise Architect) exams. Out of it, you've already cleared OCMJD. So, you can still give any certification except OCEA without attending any mandatory course.

Of course, Python is also a beautiful language, and this is not a place and time to compare Java vs Python. You don't like Java? You like Python? That's absolutely fine. My only point is - cost of just one certificate should not be reason to switch technologies altoghether.

I hope this helps.

[Cathal Mullan]

Hi Anayonkar,

I am switching to Python in protest against making these courses mandatory.

Most of the current Certified Architects did not attend training courses so that says to me that they are not necessary. In my opinion they were imposed just to make money.

I got a 94% in my OCMJD6 exam, why would I have needed to pay for a course for it???

I don't want to deal with a company like this.

I'm not being held to ransom.

[Roel De Nijs]

Cathal Mullan wrote:In my opinion they were imposed just to make money.

Could be.

But maybe it's just part of the harmonization of the different certifications. Maybe Oracle had already the mandatory course requirement for their Master certifications before acquiring Sun. After the acquisition they merged the Sun certifications into the Oracle structure and qualified a few as OCP (without mandatory course) and a few others as OCM (with the mandatory course, to be consistent with the other existing Oracle certifications).

[Cathal Mullan]

Hi Roel,

I read that was the reason at the time.

It would be my opinion that Oracle are making people go on mandatory courses which they do not need to go on for all Master exams.

I don't want to go on any courses & don't want to be involved with Oracle as a result,

cheers anyway