Phil Meyer

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since Nov 13, 2006
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Recent posts by Phil Meyer

I'm so glad that's out of the way. Between this and the SCJP I've been studying pretty much non-stop for the last four months.

I mostly used the HFSJ. There were a number of questions on the exam which were not fully covered in this book, but the vast majority were.

I also built a very small flash-card web-app to help me study. I figured I needed to make hundreds of flash-cards, and I type so much better than I print, so I made a web-app to create questions and answers, where I could quiz myself.

If anyone was interested, the app is: http://68.110.19.51:8080/jprep/

It isn't exactly worthy of sharing yet, in fact it is far from it. Also, fair warning, some of the questions make only sense to me, and some of them are either inaccurate or flat-out wrong (haven't bothered to correct them, feel free to use the modify question option to do so yourself if you find one). Plus I don't have a static IP or a DNS, so that IP could change at any time.

I plan on expanding the app at some point, right now it only has one database table, and is really bear bones. I just needed it to study from, and to test out new things. I used a lot of what I learned in the book in the web-app, and I used to it to mess around and create filters and listeners and such.

The test actually had a couple of questions I didn't like at all, and one which I still maintain they got wrong (I'll have to try it out to see). The question only had two right answers, I'm sure of it, but they said to select three.

There was another question where the actual english was confusing. I'm not sure I'd be allowed to restate fully it here, but they mentioned that a request was from a certain server, and from a certain IP, "on" port X. It wasn't clear to me if the request was from the specified port or to the specified port, and the answer depended on this interpretation. In the end I just guessed.

Overall though, I'm pretty happy with my score.

Thank you to Bert, and to Kathy, and to the co-author (his name escapes me).
17 years ago
Ha!

Okay, I figured it out. I just needed to change my JSP, so that it would recompile, and then use the EL.

Thanks so much Carol!
Thanks Carol, I thought for sure your answer would help things. My web.xml didn't have the same web-app tag as the one they list. So I changed it.


Here is my current web.xml:



I was sure that would fix the problem, from the FAQ. Unfortunately, I have the same problem.

I then thought perhaps the issue is that I have the wrong JSTL jar, so I downloaded the 1.1 jar, and put that in my web-project's lib directory. I thought there was a chance that could fix it, but it didn't.

So I'm still stuck. I'll go back to trouble-shooting this later tonight or tomorrow, perhaps I will find something. If anyone has any input in the mean time, I'd be more than thankful.
Hey guys.

I'm hard at work studying for my SCWCD test.

I've gone through the book once, with my highliter, and now on my second time through I am trying everything out on the Tomcat test environment the book has you deploy to. I've gotten servlets and simple JSPs to work just fine, and I've been having fun. I recently started messing around with the JSTL, and have started trying to use the EL.

The JSTL tags work just fine, but the EL language appears to do nothing. My EL expressions just show up on my pages as they were written into the JSP.

For example:

${7} ends up being ${7} on my web-page. Same thing for trying to access my attributes.

I'm using Tomcat 5.5.20, according to what prints when I start it up. I've been trying to trouble-shoot this, and so was afraid the JSP jar in Tomcat wasn't 2.0. I downloaded a jsp-api-2.0 jar, and replaced the jar in my [TOMCAT_HOME]/common/lib directory, but nothing changed. I think the Tomcat 5.X versions all use JSP 2.2, so that didn't surprise me.

The Head First book mentioned that EL is enabled by default, but just in case, I put the <el-ignored> JSP property in my web.xml and set it to false. Still no change, also not a surprise.

Anyone know what might be wrong? I suspect the problem is just a stupid mistake I am making.

Thank you in advance.

If there is more than one Thread waiting for the lock, then I believe that the one that is awakened is chosen at random.



Well, not necessarily at random, from what I've read, but in a way that isn't defined by the Java Spec, and is up to the particular JVM you are using. So you won't know which thread gets chosen next, it may be random, or it may be chosen by some criteria which you don't know about, and even if you did, you couldn't count on.

(correct me if I am wrong, of course)
Thanks for the advice.

I decided that I didn't want the intense pressure of attempting to get prepared to take the test by January 2nd (without much exam specific study materials), then spending 5 hours taking it, and then not knowing if I passed for who knows how long. I'm not sure I could take that.

I bought the Head First: Servlets and JSPs book today, and have been giving that a go. I can probably get certified as a Web Component Developer around the end of December or beginning of January if I study hard, but if something comes up, I won't need to panic over a deadline.

Already I am learning some new things from the book, and I don't think I am going to regret my decision.

After I get the SCWCD cert, I will finish reading the Head First EJB book, and then see what the status of the official exam is. It will probably be coming out around that time. With my thorough knowledge of EJB 2.0 from the book, I'll read up on everything I can about the EJB 3.0 upgrade, and then attempt my SCBCD 5.0 somewhere around March or April.
[ November 22, 2006: Message edited by: Phil Meyer ]

Last day of SCBCD 5.0 Beta Exam is Jan 2, 2007.



In another thread on the front page, it looks like the official test won't be coming out until February or March... If I can't get sufficiently prepared for the beta, will I be out of luck until the official one is released?
I recently passed the SCJP 5.0 test with flying colors, and I've gotten bit by the certification bug.

I went back and forth between the SCBCD and the SCWCD as to which one to go for next, and I chose the SCBCD because I decided I would get the most benefit to my current job responsibilities by improving my EJB knowledge.

However, the SCBCD study materials I've ordered are for EJB 2.0, and now everyone on this forum appears to be excited for the EJB 3.0 cert which is coming out in beta soon.

I was okay with this, because I figured knowing EJB 2.0 (or 2.1) would still be what benefits my work the most. It turns out, however, that some of the "senior" engineers are talking about moving toward EJB 3.0 in the not-too-distant future.

So if I spend a couple of months studying, and then pass the exam, I may have to go right back to studying for EJB 3.0.

I wonder if I would be better off getting the SCWCD in the next couple of months, and then when study materials for the SCBCD-5.0 become readily available, go for that cert.

Or... Should I study my butt off on the HFEJB and the SCBCD Exam Study Kit, and then read up on the EJB 3.0 spec and just go for that cert? (How long will it likely be in beta form?)

What would you do?
I myself thought they were pretty easy, but then I had prepared so dang hard for this test that they were all relatively easy.

It actually took 30 secs or so of trying to drag and drop before my first one "stuck". I started to panic, but eventually one stuck, and a realized that the mouse icon changes when you are in the right place to drop the item.

I didn't know they'd be reset when you revisit them, and so after I ran through the test once, I never revisited them.

I wasn't prepared for how very many there were. Must have been a good 25-30% of the exam.

They all look scary, but once you start looking at the code, and dropping things the first couple of things into place, the rest of the question falls into place.
I am pretty happy with my results, and credit the excellent book and mock exam included with the K&B book for helping me pass. I worked my butt off these past few weeks, and I am so glad it is finally over. I get a $100 dollar bonus from my work now, which hardly seems worth it at the 100+ hours I probably studied . But the journey, in this case, was more important than the destination, as now I am very confident in my Java knowledge, and I learned a ton during my studying.

I am a pretty ambitious guy, and so am now thinking towards the future. Why not go for another certification? Out of the Sun Certification tests out there, I am most interested in the SCJD, SCBCD, and SCWCD.

I work for a small company, adding new features and performing maintenance on a very large J2EE application. We use EJBs (stateless session and entity) and JSPs (with Struts) for the most part.

I split my time pretty evenly between the front end and back end, and couldn't honestly say which I enjoy more. My knowledge of each is almost entirely practical, I know how to use the technologies, but not why things are done a certain way, or what is happening on the back end. So I figure that studying either the SCBCD or SCWCD would give me a goal driven way to study the theoretical parts of the technology. I thought I knew Java down pat before I started studying for the SCJP, and boy was I wrong, I look forward to gaining similar knowledge in whatever certification I do next.

What I am looking for from you guys: What are the relative weights of these three certications in the marketplace? (Very important to me right now). What are their relative difficulties, assuming a basic knowledge of J2EE, especially in relation to the SCJP test? Which certification has the best resources available, and what are they?

I know that SCJD is a completely different kind of test, so would be interested in hearing others' experiences with it.

I'd love to hear suggestions. If there are threads on this forum where similar advice is given, or where these tests are compared, a link would be more than welcome.
17 years ago