Head First Web Services?

[Alexander Kolesnikov]

I am reading HF Servlets now and there are some curious phrases like: "We take the sting out of SOAP". For me, this sounds like Kathy and Bert are working on a HF WS book. Does anybody know, is this so? If yes, I'd better wait for their book instead of buying anything else...

[Peer Reynders]

Well, you'll be waiting for a long, long time.
See Bert Bates' fifth entry in Topic: Head First UML & Patterns and more recently his second entry in Head First book for SCJA.
I don't think the potential audience is large enough to make it worth their while.

You can take a look at Mikalai Zaikin's SCDJWS Study Guide.

You can also check out these threads if you are interested:
any good study guide for SCDJWS
I.M.H.O. preparitions for passing the exam
"JAVA WEB SERVICES ARCHITECTURE" with RMH
What is the proper web service tool that i can use in the preparation for the exam
how to read RMH
[ November 16, 2005: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]

[Alexander Kolesnikov]

Thanks for the answer, Peer,

I am looking at your impressive list of MS certifications. I am thinking about getting some of them myself. Can you tell me which are more difficult, J2EE or .NET?

[Peer Reynders]

Originally posted by Alexander Kolesnikov:
Can you tell me which are more difficult, J2EE or .NET?

Depends. Java/J2EE certs focus on a fairly narrow topic but require a fair amount of detailed knowledge; (it initially surprised me that none of the Sun certs have a JDBC component and only the SCJD involves Swing).
The MS certs tend to cover a much broader selection of topics and each of those topics to a fairly shallow extent (they want to make sure you are aware of most of their products and product capabilities) - that doesn't stop them from putting a few detailed zingers in the test - and the MS tests do have a few "select all that apply" questions, i.e. they won't always tell you the number of correct answers. Also they never tell you what the perfect score is. Many assume its a 1000 (you have to get at least 700) but there is evidence that the total achievable score varies - each of the questions may actually have a different weighting and each individual selection of questions forming a test instance could add up to a slightly different score (around a 1000).
Things could change with the new series of .NET 2.0 certifications.
[ November 17, 2005: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]

[Dibbo Khan]

I work in C# and have little Java commercial experience, but I got my MCSD.NET with a few months of C# experience.

In my experience the Java certs are way harder than the Microsoft ones, the Java certs go into alot of depth and are far more difficult.

The hardest MS cert exams I took were 70 - 229, SQL Server and 70 - 320, C# Web Services.

Anyhow if I were you I would wait for the C# 2.0 Exams, I will do them next year myself.