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Whizlabs SCEA Simulator - My thoughts

 
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Hi

I just bought Whizlabs SCEA exam simulator for 99$ and here are my thoughts

-- I don't know why they wouldn't provide it as a standalone application. Now I need to connect to the Internet every time I want to use it.
-- The certification page is blank; The only section I am able to use is the Learning mode!!! This looks like a bug. I have written to support@whizlabs.com about it.
-- Looks like the person who wrote the questions/answers is not very good at English.
-- In the security section, for questions on applets, the answers are copy pasted from different applet questions and are not even related to what is being asked !!!
-- One question read - In which of the following scenarios, can JSP be used? - The answer was JSTL. Shouldn't it be the other way around? JSTL is used within JSP and not vice-versa.
-- Questions are not practical. One question on HTTP session started with - If your company has a weblogic and a websphere server instance running side by side...
- why would anyone want to do that? Why would any company in their right minds pay for two different application servers for the same application?
--Some questions are very vague and tricky and rely on your ability to recognize keywords rather than being framed to help you understand the scenario correctly.

Overall, I am very disappointed that I spent 99$ on something like this. And I am not against Whizlabs; I loved their SCJP simulator.

Let me know what you guys think.
 
author and jackaroo
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That is quite disappointing. We often have Whizlabs employees on this forum - I hope one of them sees this and answers some of your concerns.

Rajiv Shr wrote: -- I don't know why they wouldn't provide it as a standalone application. Now I need to connect to the Internet every time I want to use it.



Just guesses here:

I know at one time there were complaints about the Whizlabs standalone application in that it would only run on Microsoft Windows. Having a web interface could easily solve that.

Another issue is one of piracy - because you are using a web based interface, there are numerous ways that they can try to detect piracy and cancel the license if necessary.

Another benefit (potentially a huge benefit) is that they can keep track of what choices users are making in the exam. If 100% of customers all choose the wrong answer to a particular question (and they are monitoring this) then they have the ability to have an alarm raised and have someone check the particular question for inaccuracies / bad wording. (This is effectively what Sun used to do with their Beta exams: have 500 people run through 300 questions, and then discard those that everyone got wrong (it is a little more complex than that, but the basic idea is there)).

Rajiv Shr wrote: One question on HTTP session started with - If your company has a weblogic and a websphere server instance running side by side...
- why would anyone want to do that? Why would any company in their right minds pay for two different application servers for the same application?


This could happen for lots of reasons.

They could have merged or acquired another company that had a reasonable number of applications running on the different application server.

They could primarily use product A, but but buy something that is needed for core business that is only supported on product B.

They could have a license for product A that limits them in some way (e.g. they have a 100 user license for the product). Assuming there is no intermediate license for that product (e.g. you cannot go to a 110 user license), but they need to run an additional application that only needs a 10 user license, they may consider using product B instead.

They may do it simply to avoid vendor lock in (yes, that does happen in the real world).

I worked at one company that had an unlimited use Oracle license. That is - we could install a production Oracle database on any number of computers, with any number of processors, with any number of concurrent users. Despite this we still had a large number of MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.
 
Rajiv Shr
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Yeah Andrew, I guess merger could be one situation where you have two different application servers. but in that case, it would be two different applications as well. But, anyways, I am disappointed in their Learning mode section. I didnt feel it was satisfactory considering the price tag.

Just an update from them on the issues with Certification mode -

Hi Guys,

We are currently rectifying the problems related to displaying all allotted mock exams in SCEA Product. Till than you can access your mock exams by clicking on following link:

http://www.whizlabs.com/examprep/mod/quiz/index.php?id=15


I did give their diagnostic practice test and that content was satisfactory. Hopefully their other tests are the same.
 
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Raijiv,

Thanks for you're updating and letting me know that their is a Whizlabs application for SCEA.

If I have time for part2 I will probably use it for making sure I will get part1.

 
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Hello,

I think Whizlabs is quite ok and I passed with it, but my score wasn't so high (65%).

I think the questions they have are the SUN mock questions.

My SCEA part 1 post

BR,

Mika

 
Rajiv Shr
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Just finished my 3rd pratice test. Almost all the questions were repeated from the learning mode. Add to that the vague scenario questions and you are ready to

Note to Whizlabs: If you are selling something for 99$ at least take the effort to make it worth that much.

Shakes head and searches for free mock exams...
 
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I saw couple of sample questions of Whizlabs. Their most of questions are very much aligned with SCEA. If you understand their justification of answers then you can easily clear the exam.

If you looking for exact SCEA questions then this simulator is not for you. Also you should ignore the EJB 2.0 related questions as they are old and not part of SCEA 5 exams.

For SCEA materials, you can look by blog.
 
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I totally agree with you Rajiv, the three practice exams are worthless, it all repeated from the learning mode, I scored up to 95% in the practice exams, but I've passed today with 75% only, I found that the level of questions in the actual exam is much harder and more in depth than what I got trained on in whizlap simulator, even there was a task style questions which has no similar style in whizlaps simulator.

whizlaps helped me a bit but its a low value for the paid money, and I wouldn't recommend it if you target a high score.
 
Greenhorn
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I passed the Part I exam two weeks ago after using the Whizlabs simulator for my preparation, and I found that the real exam questions are often harder than those of the mock exams, especially when it comes to questions involving making the best decision (i.e. for a given situation in a given context, what is the best choice?).

Nevertheless, the simulator fulfilled its basic job — I did pass the exam... but the result is not satisfactory according to my own criteria!...

Jeff
 
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