Hello,
I passed the OCEJWCD with 91%. I would like to share my story with you.
I started preparing for the exam 5 months ago with
Manning SCWCD Study Kit. I had the book with me everyday and used each minute in the subway to read at least a few lines. But I had to take a break after 1 month because of a very huge amount of work in my job (
JEE Developer). I felt like a zombie and used each minute in the subway to sleep... (When you are tired, take a break. Otherwise all you read will just be lost)
Two months ago, I was saying to myself: "What a waste of time if I don't finish this? moreover, I learnt new things so may be there are more to learn!!! ". I then re-opened my book and even purchased another one (
OCEJWCD Study Companion) to cover the new topics, get more updated data and get new quizzes. I also purchased Enthuware mock exams.
The reading was easy because I use a lot of the topics in my job everyday. So I focused on things like the new topics for JEE6 (like programmatic configuration). It was a pain to try to memorize method signatures...
I didn't want to spend too much time because I feared that my workload increases in my job. So I quickly started the Enthuware mock exams. This is must have. I even think that Oracle should include the drag and drop style questions because it's more effective than the multiple choices ones.
Here are my results on Enthuware:
Test 1: 77%
Test 2: 86%
Test 3: 98%
Test 4: 91%
Test 5: 93%
Test 6: 88%
Test 7: 89%
Test 8: 89%
You can notice that I did not take all the tests (two are missing, 9 and the last one). I have taken Test 8 about 2 days before the exam. I have also passed the mock exam of garnerpress the last day. I have got the link in the OCEJWCD Study Companion book. It was more difficult than the Enthuware ones. I got 75%. I also read some chapters of the
Servlet 3.0 Specification.
Finally, you
must take the
Piotr Nowicki's mock exam for the new topics. It's wonderfull and has questions that you won't find anywhere.
The real exam was well balanced. I have got questions of all the following topics: Servlet, ServletContext, Filters, JSP/JSP document, EL, JSTL, Deployment, Security, Annotation, Programmatic configuration, Design
pattern. At least 4 questions on each topic.
I decided to pass
Java certifications because I was curious. As a Java developer, I heard a lot about certifications. A lot of people think it's not worth the effort. But going through the specification is not a waste of time. It's even more effective if you can use what you learn in you real job.
One last thing: purchasing the Oracle voucher and sheduling the exam is a powerfull trigger. Do it when you have trained a lot and still feel like you are not ready. I have passed Enthuware tests 5-8 in the last week.
The next step for me are the Business Component Developer and Java developer exams (both at the same time).
Good luck!