Charles Lyons

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Recent posts by Charles Lyons

The latest exam code is actually 1Z0-899 - only the code/name really changed from 1Z0-858 ;)

310-083 was the SCWCD5 exam - the latest is Oracle Certified Expert based on Java EE 6... there are new items like annotations, modular deployment and asynchronous requests. So definitely some more ground to cover as well as what you studied before.
The difference is whether your web.xml uses an older XML DTD doctype (where orders of elements are strict), or the newer XML Schema (ordering can be loose).

Java EE 1.4 onwards use the Schemas to define the XML content, and therefore the order is generally not important.
Hi all,

Sorry for not coming around and keeping you updated.

I had a copy of the first production run in my hand yesterday and it looks great. From this I'm told:

Amazon globals: The various Amazon regionals should have it available later this week (you can pre-order)
Amazon Kindle: As soon as Amazon sort it out - shouldn't be too long I would imagine
USA and Europe: Other distributors should have copies to other outlets (online and bookshops) by end of month
Asia: There has been a delay with the Asian publication, so I'd expect that during late September
Oceania (Australia): September

We've expanded the book overall with 10% more content and revision questions, as well as rectifying errors (mostly reported by readers - thanks to everyone!) from the previous edition... it's a beefy size!

Nonetheless, it's finally here

Charles.
Hi all,

Apologies for not replying sooner - time seems to fly by!

The final revisions are going in the new Oracle / Java EE 6 version of the book in the next couple of weeks. There has been a lot of ground to cover with the new objectives, including 3 new chapters and various other modifications throughout, examples, new questions, errata incorporation etc. As usual we're trying to get this as perfect as possible on the first pass, rather than rush to publication and contain many errors.

Bear with us - the proof should be with the printers by the end of this month and then it usually takes a couple of weeks before it becomes available to ship out.

We are working with distribution partners in the UK, Europe, USA and India so should be available for ordering locally

Charles.
Hi all,

Happy New Year!

It has been a while since I popped over the 'Ranch and moseyed around; so long in fact, that last time I posted the Java EE exams were still called SCWCD! (Instead of that monstrously long new name!)

So looking towards 2012, we're busy revising the SCWCD Study Companion title to bring it in line with the latest Java EE 6 Oracle 1Z0-899 exam. The major new topics (which are covered briefly in the current SCWCD 5 Study Companion appendix) are annotations/dynamic deployment and asynchronous request handling, along with some maintenance changes in other areas. Plus a whole raft of errata from you all to sift though - makes for a fun(!) few days but thank you all for your feedback, corrections and suggestions, even if we haven't been able to reply to each one individually. They have all been noted and will be attended to.

So really my question is for those who either are studying for the exam now, or have recently passed it: is/was there anything particularly hard, something new and confusing, or anything you didn't expect to come up in the exam? Whilst we're shuffling and tweaking, it would be worthwhile (particularly if you're yet to sit the exam) to get your opinions and ideals for the new edition, and try to incorporate as much useful material as possible.

Hope your studying goes well for you this year ;)

Charles.
My guess is that if there are any changes, they'll be to test on Servlet 3.0, which basically means knowing:

  • Annotations rather than deployment descriptor elements
  • Asynchronous request/response lifecycle
  • Programatically adding servlets/filters/listeners (actually useful?!)
  • The extra convenience methods and annotations in the API (e.g. for file uploading)
  • The new login/logout methods on HttpServletRequest (minor but useful API change)

  • I'd be surprised if anything else made it into a new exam... the bulk of that lot is the first 2 points. If you know generics and annotations from Java SE, then the migration to the new specifications is an easy one... just a case of learning a bunch of annotations rather than web.xml deployment descriptor elements!!

    If that's all it is, us authors are happy... means at most we rewrite a chapter and make a few tweaks here and there

    Gwapo Tisoy wrote:I am planning to buy the Charles Lyons and because of the Oracle updates, I won't buy Charles version for now. Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.


    Ah, don't let it stop you
    I see you've filed this as a bug in Tomcat: body-content of empty in TLD ignored for JSP Documents. That's probably the best move. I imagine this is an oversight in the JSP document translator, since the container can't enforce the "empty" content by XML schemas but instead has to do it programmatically at translation time, and I guess that test is missing in the translation engine. You could also try this on non-Tomcat containers (e.g. Caucho Resin) and see what behaviour that gives.

    jimmy cheng wrote:Hi, Charles, has your book been published in a Chinese edition?


    No, I'm afraid not. The Indian/Asian edition is also in English.
    Well done to all the winners! Thank you to everybody for their questions - it has certainly been a busy week and you've kept me on my toes replying!

    If I have happened to miss any questions, please drop me a PM with the thread details and I'll take another look. Similarly, if you have any other questions about my book which are thus far unanswered.

    Bert Bates wrote:(And dang - once again I didn't win)


    Well, you can always buy a copy... I won't mind

    Nicole Lacoste wrote:What’s your style? Is your book a bit more concise / serious?


    I have to watch what I say... Bert is lingering around the corner somewhere listening to me

    Seriously though, my book is a more traditional style - similar to the style of Kathy & Bert for SCJP (which I studied from and thought was great). We have a little joke (usually an appalling pun to be honest) every now and again through the book, but primarily it's concise and flows well, each chapter building on knowledge from the last, and every topic covered in as much detail as necessary to make you a good programmer. Pretty much the entire platform is covered.

    I'd suggest taking a look at the sample chapter and table of contents available on SCWCD Study Companion publisher's homepage (under the Downloads section). You can assess the style and layout of the book for yourself there.
    Hi, thanks for your post!

    Judging by feedback we've had from readers who started with HFSJ like yourself, I think you'd find my book helpful to enhance the concepts you've covered in HFSJ. As Marc mentioned in the bunkhouse review, my book makes a concise reference too, and adheres fairly completely to the specifications as mentioned in the 3 Steps to Success review (see Step 2).

    It also has a couple of chapters on the new things in Java EE 5, and a few pages on prospective changes in the forthcoming Java EE 6, so with my book you can update your knowledge past the J2EE 1.4 specifications used in the current SCWCD exam.
    As I understand, "performance based" here means choosing the best code snippet to insert on line X which gets the job done (or similar). Actually, a lot of the questions in my book and in the online mock exam have always been in this style. Some are drag and drop and supply an exhibit with certain lines omitted - the idea is to select the correct lines to be dropped in the correct places - and sometimes there are more choices to drag than lines to drop in (requiring careful selection of lines and not just elimination). So you really have to choose very carefully the code fragments which get the job done in the right places. Some of my multiple choice questions ask which line of code is best inserted on line X to achieve goal Y etc. So there are a lot of those more involved questions in there. We've had a lot of feedback to say the book questions and online mock exam are very challenging, but as I've always said, they are designed to get you thinking so the exam seems straightforward, by comparison.

    Łukasz Suchecki wrote:And if everybody asks aoubt SCWCD Study Companion - if the knowledge is needed - is that topic covered in that book ?


    It certainly is covered. There's a whole page dedicated to it (across pages 135-136 in Chapter 6 "RequestDispatcher & Wrappers"). The 10 mentioned by Christophe, above, form the complete set.

    As you'll have noticed, the 10 quickly reduce to 5 for learning purposes, by exchanging the "include" for "forward" in the stem. The names are also all lower case, using an underscore where the Java method name would capitalise. Just a couple of hints.
    Absolutely. Yes. Definitely. Most certainly. But then you expected me to say that didn't you?! (You can tell I'm having an insane/silly day today )

    In all seriousness, yes you will be able to learn the concepts, appreciate the details and pass the exam with my book. Alongside that though, you need to be doing practical examples of your own - you may wish to find a few free Web-based tutorials on how to deploy your first Web application in Tomcat or Glassfish etc., and possibly set up a build environment in Eclipse or similar. These examples will help you identify weaker areas better, and give you all-important hands-on experience. You would probably find some mock exams helpful to increase your confidence about the on-screen format of the real exam too. We include one online mock exam with the book, but there are many other bespoke software pieces available for extra practise.
    Every point made in this thread is valid! For me, there are two things to demonstrate to an employer: (1) theoretical knowledge and memory, because you'll be a much faster (read "efficient" by HR) programmer if you know exactly what's out there and how to use it, without having to use reference material every minute of the day; (2) practical experience so you have already encountered some of the pitfalls and possible resolutions to problems, which builds design knowledge and ideas for future projects.

    SCWCD certainly proves you know the theory required to build decent Web applications. To gain the practical experience, do lots of examples of your own, then (if you can't find employment or freelance work), try to contribute to other open source projects or similar to show you can follow the guidelines laid down by a lead programmer/coordinator, and can write well structured code. As an employer, I'd look at SCWCD and that would tick the theory box for me - I'd then be looking for some work experience or demonstrable coding examples in addition.

    I've always been of the mentality that having a solid theoretical knowledge allows you to go further when doing practical work, but I know that's not a universally adopted viewpoint.