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Latest RMH

 
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I am about the start my preperation of the Web Services Certification. After going through all the posts it looks like

J2EE Web Services by Richard Monson-Haefel

is the best book for this purpose.

But in Amazon it shows the publishing date of this book as October 17, 2003.

http://www.amazon.com/J2EE-Web-Services-Richard-Monson-Haefel/dp/0321146182/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-0284062-6562001?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180608270&sr=1-1

A lot of changes must happened in Web Services since then. What I want to know is, whether this book covers all that is required for the current version of the exam or is there some version released after the one I am viewing.
 
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Hi Anjali,

That should not be a problem because SCJWSD certification is based on J2EE1.4, which this edition of RMH book covers very well. Infact, every topic in the book explains the changes which are being taken place in the next versions of the standards and APIs (which are not covered in the certification exam but useful in actual development).

Currently, as I study this book, it gives me a lot of pleasure which I can't stop studying until logically complete a topic.

Thanks and Regards,
Naren

SCJP - 93%
SCJWSD - Under Progress
 
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is the certification still based on J2EE. I think its now based on JEE. In that case: is the RMH book still the way to go for preparation?
 
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No, the SCDJWS certification has not changed, so the RMH book is still applicable. That also means that the exam is now seriously out of step with the current Java WS APIs (e.g., it covers JAX-RPC instead of JAX-WS); you'll need to weigh that against the supposed benefits of taking the exam.
 
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My experience with the exam is that it is mostly about high level concepts (architecture, security, xml processing) and not that much about API's. IMHO the certificate is still very good way to show you know your webservices stuff.
 
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It is highly unlikely the RMH web services book will ever be updated (so a JAX-WS certification would need an entirely new candidate - and there isn't a good and comprehensive one in sight).

RMH stated that J2EE web services were overly complex:
JAX-RPC is Bad, Bad, Bad!

Later he stated that JAX-WS was still too complex:
JAX-WS is Bad, Bad!
Redeemed! JAX-WS still sucks!

As an analyst at Burton Group he predicted a collapse of Java Enterprise Edition (not to be confused with Enterprise Java).
Analysts see Java EE dying in an SOA world

Still later he came to the conclusion that REST is a more practical choice than WS-* in many scenarios:
WS* vs. REST / Intelligence vs. Wisdom

Now he has left Burton Group, after having been an RiA expert there for some time, to become part of Curl Inc. who develop the enterprise application Curl Rich Internet Application Platform (Curl? Are you nuts?).
[ February 25, 2008: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]
 
Paul Napauleon
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do you think it's a good investment diving into the certification (looing at the future of webservices)?
 
Peer Reynders
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Originally posted by Paul van den Berg:
do you think it's a good investment diving into the certification (looing at the future of webservices)?



Web services aren't going away. What do you want the certification for? If its simply an entry on your resume then it probably never has been "worth it". If however you are looking for your own personal milestone of learning about web services as an interfacing technology in the J2EE 1.4 space then it is a good certification especially as it will also include technologies that have relevance outside of J2EE, like XML, XML Schema, SOAP and WSDL.

The inclusion of UDDI/JAXR was fashionable at the time and seems a bit of dead weight right now. JAX-RPC has been deprecated and replaced by JAX-WS. However preparation for the current SCDJWS will give you a solid foundation in Java web services technology that should easily extend to the current APIs.

Many have been holding off because of the belief that a Java EE 5/JAX-WS based exam will be easier - mainly because of the shift form XML-based configuration to Java annotations. Apart from some "common sense defaults" most of the complexity has shifted rather than gone away. For some annotations you may have to add logic in seemingly unconnected areas if your needs don't coincide with the "common sense defaults". And for certification you will need to know what to do in those situations. Annotations also have the unfortunate side-effect of promoting a Java-centric view, which is something that you want to avoid with web services if interoperability with non-Java platforms is a concern (if it isn't should you be using web services?).

Some feel that "simply updating" the exam to Java EE 5/JAX-WS will make it a more desirable certification. I don't think it is as simple as that. Things have changed. In 2003/2004 web services focused on enabling Remote Procedure Call style communication through firewalls and over the internet (which was promptly used to expose SLSBs as web services). However SOAP was also seen a the basis for the next stage in (application-level) distributed processing which could ultimately enable dynamic business process management (BPM).

The landscape has changed. It isn't clear whether Java EE 5 or any of its successors will ever be as relevant as J2EE 1.4 was (often an application server is overkill). Nonetheless JAX-WS and JAXB are also part of Java SE 6. BPM and SOAP, WSDL are still relevant but will probably be much less mainstream than was initially predicted (and hoped). SOAP and WS-* do what they were designed to do - but it turns out that many web service applications didn't need to do what WS-* was designed to do; e.g. most web services talk directly to the client - SOAP was designed to travel over intermediate nodes, possibly over transports other than HTTP. SOAP-based RPC, as desired by the developers, wasn't as interoperable as it needed to be, so document-oriented SOAP has become the standard. Now the vision of the machine-readable web has stepped more into the forefront. SOAP web services are no longer the only game in town. XML over HTTP is used in simple scenarios (which can be done with servlets) and REST is used more and more for data services and Rich Internet Application support. XML is no longer the only reasonable choice as a data/media format. JSON for example is used in RIA support or for transmitting objects.

So you can only decide based on your needs whether the certification is worth it. I doubt that a future certification will be easier - it may simply be more specialized.
 
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Hi Peer,
Even I preparing for SCDJWS.I dont have any practical experience.As you said in your message that it all depends on your area of expertise .Whether you should take the certification or not.So just want to confirm with you if I will go certification and clear it .Will I get job in that area without any practical experience.
As After reading your message I got confused I should go for SCDJWS or any other java certification(SCWCD,SCBCD).
Please guide me.
Thanks in advance.
 
Peer Reynders
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Originally posted by Divya Gehlot:
Will I get job in that area without any practical experience.



There is no guarantee of that with any vendor certification. The rule of thumb is that the certification will give you edge over somebody else who has equivalent skills but lacks the certification. In general:

(no practical experience) < (no practical experience + certification) < (practical experience) < (practical experience + certification)

The other problem is that there is no quality indicator with the certification. It is often the case that certification holders have only proven that they can pass the exam - it doesn't necessarily mean that they truly comprehend the subject matter. Then there are people who take the certification extremely seriously, so by the time they take the certification they are far more competent than many people that can claim to have "casual" practical experience. Some people who claim to have "practical experience" may have created something that (hopefully) works - it doesn't necessarily mean it was well designed or coded by any of the accepted standards.

You can gain "practical experience" by volunteering your newly acquired skills to any web community that may require such skills.
[ February 27, 2008: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]
 
Divya Gehlot
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HiPeer,
Thanks for your guidence.
I giving the SCDJWS certification in May-08.
Hope I will clear it with all your guidence and wishes.
 
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