Thanks Loveleen.
Here is the approach I took for prepration.
I tried the Beta Exam intially but unfortunatly failed. I scored 30% only at that time. All I read at that time was about new features of
Java 5.0 and that too for approx a week. Here is a detailed tutorial:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5/pdf/generics-tutorial.pdf You must have realised, that I was over-confident and took the exam too lightly. By this time K&B's head first Java was released and I was too quick to order that because Sun gave me free voucher for taking the exam. So this time I took some time to read the K & B's book. I knew most of stuff but I found the book very interesting and hightly recommend for people who are new to language. But this is not much usefull for certification. After finishing the book I decided that I want to give the exam in next 15 days.
At this time I started visting javaranch site. Again I was too confodent and there was nothing which I had to ask, I was mostly answering other peope's question. Considering myself a master of trade.
At this stage due to my intial reading of Java 5 features and reading of Head first java, I thought I now know Generics very well. That's when I tried following mock exam:
http://www.javabeat.net/javabeat/tiger/notes/tiger_mock1.html Very pathatic performance. I scored approx 40% and answered only 7 question right. But because of this exam, many concepts of generics were very clear to me. I could not find any other free mick exam on Generics to confirm my readiness but now I can conform this because in actual exam in Genrics I answered 80% questions right. I would highly recommend this mock exam. Do it only when you think you are ready and know everything on Generics.
I booked my exam and I had 3-4 days to prepare now.
I found MZ notes but didn't started reading them. Just bookmarked them. From Generics mock exam experience I realised that I have to try more nick exams. Somewhere I found a Marcuss Green's mock exam for java 5, it was a
test version. I decide to use it at the last, after I complete all other exams. I tried many free mock exams. You can can all of them at:
http://www.javaranch.com/mock.jsp All of them were for Java 1.4. So when you do them, print them out first . Any question on AWT or bit manipulation, don't bother. Do the rest and calculate your score ignoring AWT and bit manipulation questions. My score was in the range of 40% to 80%. As I did more and more my confidence grew (which was actually lost little bit intitially.)
I had an old certification book of Simon Robert, Phillip Heller and Michael Ernest. I did all the questions from first 7 chepters.
On day before exam I had prepared all old stuff of Java and was feeling like reading more on new features. I looked at my printout of Genreics mock exam to revise my understaninf from that mock exam. Phillip heller sent me a document on Generics but most of things in that, I already knew, so I didn't pay much attention to that.
I read more on new features from
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5/pdf/generics-tutorial.pdf *
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/foreach.html *
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/autoboxing.html *
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/enums.html *
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/varargs.html *
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/static-import.html At this time I realised that I don't know about API's much. at this time I started reading.
I read Sun's trails on Regular expressions. Understand that.
Another important topic is new Queue implementations. Again read from sun's web site.
For API's and new features MZ has nice documentation. I mainly used it for Date and Number formatting API's. I didn't score much on API's but I totally blank on this before read here. To get good marks
you should try to find some mock exams.
http://java.boot.by/scjp-tiger/ By the time you appear for exam, K&B certification book will be out. Probably that one book should be enough for you.
Practicing mock exam is the key. Try to be more involed in Java certfication forum on Java ranch as people always post trickiet questions here.
Goog luck to you for your exam!!
