I passed the exam yesterday, only 69%, but a pass is a pass. I wanted to share some thoughts about what YOU could do to get a better score than I did.
I did NOT take the practice exam at the end of the HFSJ book. I left it for the last minute, and then thought my time would be better spent cramming the notes that I had made. So DON'T make the same mistake that I did -- take the practice test roughly ONE WEEK before you take the exam, and then concentrate on your weaker areas. DON'T blow off the end-of-chapter tests, either.
I DID make my own notes, often copying from the HFSJ book verbatim (even using good-old Paint for many of the diagrams). In the end, I had an 80+ page Word document that I could take along for review.
I DID setup an ANT script that would let me quckly create and deploy the test files in the book to Tomcat. Some learn through words, but I learn by doing. Having the quick feedback was important, and I would suggest the next edition of HF(fill in the blank) include either ANT or Maven to show some sort of automated build and deploy tool.
I did NOT have extensive Tomcat or Web server experience (my background is POJO and JMS), so I came to this topic behind others who have this background. Creating my own notes, actually trying the code, and (of course) HFSJ helped me achieve this milestone.
I really can't say enough about the HF series. I'm not alone in wanting HF for Web Services!!
BTW, I want to thank Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates for being gracious enough to not only say 'hi' when I met them at the Sun Certified party at JavaOne2005, but to stay at the table and answer many questions people had. (I didn't know they used stock photo clips throughout their books.) QUALITY FOLKS--I hope you get the opportunity to meet them sometime.