Some advice about EE6 Web Service exam

[Christiaan Thamm]

This isnt really advice, maybe more of a warning. This test is MUCH more difficult that the others. Ive done most of them, just JPA outstanding, and this test is in a league of its own. Make sure you know web services design stuff, like what technologies to use in a specific situation. Also you must know the low level SOAP services pretty well.

EZPratice labs study material and tests: These are really bad. really. The study material doesnt explain anything, they just copied some content somewhere from the middle of some spec. The the questions they ask on the section has content that have absolutely nothing to do with what you just went through. In the mock tests there are duplicate questions, sometimes right after each other. Overall really bad test pack. But, i cant really say dont buy it. There were about 3 questions in the exam where i specifically recognized the similar question from the pack, which obviously helped

Enthuware: Ive always been a fan of enthuware. But dont solely rely on this. There were lots of question on the exam where i went WTF. Study hard, study specs and websites as much as you can

Cool

[Himai Minh]

I agreed. Never rely on only one material. Read Java Web Services Up and Running, MZ' notes, Ivan's notes, Ethuware, EPractice Lab, check out posts here in this forum and etc.
EPractice Lab is somewhat helpful even though it does not explain the answers well. Ethuware is much better than that. But still both mock exams are helpful.
MZ suggested us to try as many different mock exams as we can afford to pass this exam. You can ask ask MZ for his quizzes via his email.

My other hint is to read WSIT tutorial's chapter about best practice and design. It may be helpful too.

[David Sabate]

Hmmm .. that sounds quite scary for someone like me that passed the OCPJP6 last May and this is the next certification that I would like to attempt.

I didn't find that easy to pass OCPJP but I must admit there are lots of info available and lots of tests to prepare very well for the exam. As much as painful sometimes, I've enjoyed overall the experience.

I've seen Christiaan that you have already done a lot of cert exams, do you think is possible to attempt this exam without any other certification preparations? I've just got the Java Web Services: Up and Running book and I'm planning to prepare for December.

Thanks,

David

[Himai Minh]

3 months of preparation for this exam may not be good enough.
This exam covers a lot of materials and the materials come from many different sources.
I passed my OCJP 6 and OCMJD before I passed my OCEJWSD.

You can handle this exam before you pass other expert exams. But it took me 14 months to learn and prepare for this exam.

[Christiaan Thamm]

The worst thing about this exam is the lack of resources.. Youre exactly right, the OCPJP is challenging but theres so many resources, you cant really go wrong. For the web services exam you have to go and find the resources based on petty HIGH level requirements. It was quite frustrating. I studied about 3 months, with probably about 10 hours a week. But, ive done so many of these things it definately helped. As an example, there are actually quite a few topics/questions on the exam that deal with the web component web.xml, which you study in the web component exam. Theres also a few questions on EJB security/transactions/deployment descriptors that you study in the EJB exam. Granted, these questions arent very low level, but ive already knew this content since i did EJB 3 months ago and before that i did the Web one.

It is possible if you really put in the hours. But, if youre planning to do the other certs anyway, i would rather do it that way round!

Some more info on my study material:

1) Ethuware tests
2) EZpractice labs tests and 'study material'
3) I started reading Java Web Services up and running, everyone recommends it. But in my early stages of studying i didnt find it at all helpful to a newb.
4) Oracle has a pretty good tutorial section on SAAJ
5) The WS spec
6) MZs notes
7) Googling topics i still didnt understand after going through all the above

I ended up getting 80%, but im sure half of that were lucky guesses I pulled my hair out in the test. For most of my other tests i got 90 something

Haha, so dont use my post as an excuse to not do it! Use it as an excuse to study twice as hard as you would have!!

Good luck, let me know what happens

[Himai Minh]

Yes, I agreed. I spent 14 months studying for the exam, reading this forum posts and reviewing the materials twice on daily basis after work.

During the exam, I felt lucky that I guessed the correct answer.
For some questions, I didn't even understand what they ask. Then, I eliminated the options that did not sound possible.

For the rest of the ranchers, like MZ mentioned , you can try as many mock exams as you can afford. That really helps.

[S Poon]

I agree with the above posts, but this exam isn't really hard to crack. Of course you need some experience with EBJ, Servlets and building web services (JAXWS and JAXRS) on these technology, but this exam isn't really about "HOW to create a web service", but rather from the perspective of an web service expert/consultant giving advice to someone. Would you recommend SOAP or REST web service, what about security, what will you use , why you need it, how do you configure those, what about performance (using MTOM for binary attachment?, asynchronous web service needed?, xml parsing (stax, sax, dom), xml overhead), what about logging (handlers) and so on. For me the most boring part was the Basic Profile, which basically is a law book about what not to do to increase interoperability (between Java en .Net for example). But essential, since that's what SOAP web service are mend for. This exam looks difficult, because web services are difficult. There is a lot of choices to make....even when we talk about configuration, which you can do with annotations, ejb-jar.xml, web.xml, web service.xml, wsit configuration file, vendor configuration file and last but not least the WSDL). Besides vendor configuration file, you need to know these all for the exam.

The easiest way to learn and crack this exam is to understand. There are simply too much topics to grasp and you really don't need to know everything in tiny detail for this exam. Besides, that's why we use google right? =)

[Mikalai Zaikin]

I am surprised "J2EE WebServices" by Richard Monson-Haefel is not mentioned - it's a good book IMHO in terms of XML, XSD, WSDL, SOAP, SAAJ, and last but not least -- WS-I basic profile 8-)

The outdated chapters like JAX-RPC, UDDI, JAXR can be just skipped.

[S Poon]

Actually, I'm not surprised since this book "J2EE WebServices" by Richard Monson-Haefel is so old. It is indeed a very good book, and needs to be updated. Although concepts about webservice, design patterns and best practices still applies.

But still I wouldn't recommend this book, because coding in Java is dramatically changed since we have annotations. It really makes coding easier for everyone=) Not talking about Under the hood code, because that's basically the same.

I would recommend books of Thomas Erl for web service design and SOA architecture. But maybe too much for this exam=)

Steven

[Himai Minh]

RMH's book has a good chapter explaining message handlers. This chapter is still helpful for this exam.

A rancher suggested Java SOA Cookbook as a supplemental material for the exam.

[Rohini Sahuji]

Himai Minh wrote:

My other hint is to read WSIT tutorial's chapter about best practice and design. It may be helpful too.

What chapters from WSIT tutorial you suggest?

[Himai Minh]

For WSIT Tutorial, the chapter about best practice is useful.
Also, pay attention to the chapter about WS-addressing.