Hey guys, I wanted to share my impressions after succeeding the Spring Professional certification.
I think this might be useful to others.
I had no knowledge of Spring beforehand, there are no prerequisite other than
java knowledge. (I studied
OCAJP beforehand)
I read two books to study for this certification :
1 : "Pivotal Certified Professional Core Spring 5 Developer Exam A study Guide Using Spring Framework 5 Second Edition" written by Iuliana Cosmina and published by Apress.
2 : "Core Spring 5 Certification in Detail" written by Ivan Krizsan.
The first one is raw Spring theory.
The second are the answers to the questions provided by Pivotal in their study guide that you can download here
https://tanzu.vmware.com/training/certification/spring-professional-certification.
And I practiced mock exams, a lot of them.
And let me tell you that you really shouldn't pay a single $ for them.
There are two reasons why you shouldn't pay for mock exams.
1 : they are nowhere close to the questions asked on the actual exam, not especially harder or easier, just not the same type of questions.
2 : the david mayer mocks(40$) were
exactly the same questions as itestjava(25$) and they both are the same than the ones you can download for free on android with the app SpringQCM.
I really must insist on the fact that they are the same questions, so if you want mock exams, do your wallet a favor and download the android app that is free.
But to be honnest, mock exams weren't really a big help,
you should focus on understanding the topics, the book from Ivan Krizsan was a big help for me in that matter.
It took me 5 weeks to read the books and prepare for the exam, about 5 hours per day excluding weekends.
Don't hesitate to ask questions on this forum if something is confusing for you, that's what I did and people here are welcoming and helping.
I want to thank Stephan van Hulst for answering a question I asked on this forum and Campbell Ritchie for welcoming me.
