Steve Smith

Well done, good score

Hi all,

I currently have approx one year J2SE experience and want to change jobs. Is it worth me going for another J2SE position or should I go for a J2EE one? Will I be able to get a J2EE position without commercial experience? If not then how can I get into it? I am already a SCJP and SCJD, but would it maybe worth going for one of the J2EE certifications before looking for a J2EE position?

Many thanks for you help.

Now arrived

Hi all,

In certmanager.net/sun it shows the event "Developer for the Java 2 Platform Kit: Mailed" just over 2 weeks ago now. But I have still yet to receive my certificate. Does anyone know if it normally takes that long? Who should I contact to find out what is happening? I'm in England if that makes a difference.

I have recently passed SCJD but don't know what to go for next. I was thinking of taking one of the J2EE exams. Which one would you guys recommend and why? I don't use any J2EE in my job, but would like to do something that could be useful later in my life at some point.

[ February 14, 2006: Message edited by: Steve Smith ]
[ February 14, 2006: Message edited by: Steve Smith ]

Congrats, that is an amazing score!

Originally posted by James Clarke:
Hi,

Do we need to study design patterns to do the assignment correctly ?

thanks,

J.C

I would say that it is a good idea to use design patterns in your assignment. To get through the exam you could probably get by on a minimal amount of knowledge of them from the Sun Certified Java Developer book. If you want to look at them in more detail, I would recommend the head first design patterns book. It all depends how much of a rush you are in to get the certification.
[ January 31, 2006: Message edited by: Steve Smith ]

My results are now up (I passed ). Sun took about 4 weeks to mark it.
[ January 30, 2006: Message edited by: Steve Smith ]

Originally posted by Steve Baranski:
Hi Steve: I know you were seeking the experiences of people that have already received their results, so I'd initially refrained from responding to your post.

If it's any consolation, I've been waiting for just over two weeks now. I uploaded on 1/5 and testing on Friday the 6. I thought the Prometric doc I received at the completion of my exam said 2-4 weeks was typical, but I have read elsewhere that it's 4-6. You're right - it doesn't seem long until you're actually waiting!

And BTW, sorry you guys lost to the Seahawks yesterday.

It's good to know I'm not the only one feeling like that! I think the best thing to do is just try to forget about it. I'm going to try to limit myself to checking the results page at most twice a day. Good luck with the results and let us know when you get them!

Thanks for the reply Andrew. I am almost up to 3 weeks waiting so far. Potentially still a while to go still then! Guess I will just have to be patient. 4 - 6 weeks doesn't sound like that long but it certainly seems like it when you are waiting.

I am currently waiting for my SCJD result and am interested in how quickly other people got theirs. Please post how long it took and when you submitted.

Will suncert@Thomson.com send a response to say that upload permission is configured? Or should I just try to upload a day after emailing them?

Sorry for talking to myself a bit here, It's just I have done a fair bit on the assignment today. I decided to have just an instance variable raf. In create, I synchornise on my Vector of locked records, but only until I have marked the new record as active and then locked it. The rest of the method can then carry on safely.

I am now starting to get a bit worried about Deadlock though. If I have an instance variable RAF then I think Im going to need to synchronize on it to prevent it getting corrupted, but at the same time I'm synchronizing on my Vector of locked records. I haven't seen any deadlock but surely it's possible that this could lead to deadlock? I could ensure a certain order of synchronization, but is this bad practice? Also, if there is one instance of Data.java per client, do I actually need to synchronise the raf?

Any thoughts appreciated
[ October 28, 2005: Message edited by: Steve Smith ]

After coming back to this I have a few more questions.

1. How can locking work with the create() method, as the record does not exist to lock when you call create?

2. With regards to the raf, should I be creating a new one in each method in Data, or should I use an instance variable and synchornize all methods that use it? Bearing in mind I intend to have multiple instances of the Data class.

What I was currently thinking is the following:
Have both a static raf and an instance variable raf. The create method synchronizes on the static raf, which means that the create method can only be running once for all Data instances at any one time. This provides thread safety for the create method. The rest of the methods use the instance variable raf and are all synchronised to prevent corruption of the raf. Thread safety is provided via lock() and unlock() for these methods. So basically I am treating create() as a different case with seperate locking strategy. Is this a good way to do it, or is there a better way?

Another option is to just synchronise on my lockedRecords Vector within the create method. However this will stop the user from modifying any records whilst the create operation takes place. This seems to be a simpler solution to code but worse for peformance.

Many thanks for any help. If my questions are unclear please say and I will rephrase them.
[ October 28, 2005: Message edited by: Steve Smith ]

Hi all,

I have been thinking about the best way of booking records in URLyBIRD. At first I though I would use the record number. But thinking about it further this introduces a potential problem. If there is a record on screen and it is deleted on the database and a new record created, the new record can reuse the record number. So in theory if this occurs whilst someone is using the system, the user could be booking a completely different record to what they see. The record number stored can become associated with a different record.

Would it be better perhaps to use all database fields for booking instead of the record number? The problems I can think of with this are that its a bit less efficient and if two records are the same then the user could end up booking a different record number to the one they clicked if there are 2 records that container the same values for all fields. But then again, maybe this is not important if the records are essentially the same.

A third option could be to use the record number and also send the field's values through, and confirm the record has not changed before going ahead with the booking. What does everyone else think? Am I looking too much into this?