Hi all,
I finally gave the exam a short while back. Here is my experience.
Background:
Did a few high-level UI programs. Read the specs. for about 15 days and wrote notes (available in a separate
thread in JavaRanch).
Experience:
1. Exam is looooong. I kind of lost concentration after 2 hours. I took the exam in approx. 2 1/2 hours and reviewed for 5 mins. The idea of reviewing 169 questions was too daunting
2. Very few questions from the first 2 chapters, most of them are very easy. So
you should not be spending too much time on these chapters. Just skim through the specs. and my notes (I found them relevant for these sections).
3. Questions were generally spread evenly between the other chapters. I believe I got lesser questions in MMAPI and Security, although that might not be true for everyone.
4. I found the WMA and Networking questions to be very thorough and significantly difficult. If you haven't done programming in those areas, it might be tough. Be sure to recognize various URL formats.
5. Game questions very tricky. I think it will be very useful if you have developed at least one game using Sprite and TiledLayer.
6. I got a lot of interesting questions about improving the performance of an application. Some were directly from the spec., and some were quite challenging.
7. Drag & Drop questions are very interesting and relatively easy. Almost all questions were dnd or multiple choice.
8. Security questions were reasonably tough. You should definitely concentrate on JAD and JAR declarations and how to use them in practice. Try to develop at least one signed suite. It will be very helpful.
9. Most of the questions had some sample code attached. You should really know the structure of MIDlet code to fair well in the exam.
10.There were some usual Sun Certification traps in the exam that you might have encountered in other exams like
SCJP. Be prepared for them
Other Experience:
1. I found 2 mistakes overall in the exam. In one, the line number was wrong, and I forgot the other
2. There was one question that was out-of-topic. Dealt with PBP.
3. Some questions required knowledge of the EXACT syntax of APIs. I found this to be a bit unfair since most programmers tend to use the API documentation and
IDE support for correct terms. I can accept this for some basic classes (like java.lang.*) but to expect the programmer to know the exact syntax of other packages is asking a bit too much. It tends to
test your memory rather than your skill.
That said, all the best for your exams. As for mine, the results are supposed to come in 6-8 weeks. Whether I will pass or not, I have no clue. But till then,
