Hi Larry,
Your assignment contains 2 files: a database file and a set of instructions/requirements. Some of these requirements are "must" requirements (if you don't have implemented these ones, you fail), other ones are a whole lot more open, there are very easy requirements (you have to implement this interface and your class has to be Data),...
There is no possibility to ask questions about these requirements to anybody from Sun/Oracle. The only resources you'll have are this great forum (where each possible questions is asked already) and the great SCJD book by Andrew Monkhouse (which I used myself). I had already a whole lot of enlightning discussions with other opinions about the requirements and different solutions of the same problem.
My SCJD assignment was bought by my former employer, so I didn't have to pay it. And I didn't get a raise or some benefits when achieving this certification, but this was also not the aim of taking this certification. If it will help you to get a job, I don't know (since I started my own company in the beginning of this year, so I didn't need a job interview
). But I think when you have some certifications on your cv it shows you are motivated and eager to learn, which are important characteristics for a developer.
The Swing part of this assignment is really limited. They don't require a fully-fledged GUI. I had a simple GUI with some dialogs and a JTable to show results (no toolbar, a very limited menu-bar),...
The SCJD is besides the
SCEA certification, the only on which is performance based. It demonstrates you are able of problem solving, taking decisions and argumenting why you took them. And you have to right documentation (both javadoc and user guide). You will also be assessed on your coding style. But you will only get your end score with no other feedback at all (unless you'll fail, then you'll get the reason why). Before the acquisition by Sun you got a score per section too, but if you had a 97 / 100 for general considerations you will never know why you lost these 3 points (which could have been a bit frustrating). But now it's just your total score and that's it.
Taking the SCJD or not depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you want to get a job as a web application developer some Spring and/or Hibernate certifications will be more valuable to you (or maybe the SCBCD, SCWCD,...), because these certifications will proof more specific knowledge than this SCJD certification (which only shows you have good/fine/excellent developer skills)
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Roel