Hello Ranchers,
I cleared part one today with 81%. Not thrilled with the score but I guess it is what it is..
.
I would like to thanks Jeanne Boyarsky,Mikalai Zaikin, Yasser Ibrahim and
Java Champ...and all the ranchers..
Neways, thought of listing my exp. hope this helps fellow ranchers.
Books & Materials:
1. SCJEA study guide by Cade & sheil.
2. GOF
Patterns book
3.
J2EE Core Design Patterns book
4. EJB3 In Action & Oreilly EJB 3 (I had this from my SCBCD prep)
5. Mikalai Zaikin's SCJEA study guide -
6. Besides this I trolled the web and looked for articles on specific topics.
I was a regular on Java Champ, and took all the mock exams available on it. I used to score 85 - 90 in the beginning
and towards the end I used to score 100%. However, I attribute the cool scores with question familiarity. Overall, I totally
loved the Java Champ mocks. Thanks a lot Yasser and others for putting those together.
Maximum prep time was spent on Patterns, it was the most fun too.
I also followed Jeanne Boyarsky's advice to create flash
cards for patterns, that helped a lot.
Improving my pattern knowledge has been my biggest take away from this exam.
As I did not purchase any paid
test suite I was lacking confidence that I was prepared enough, so about 4 weeks from'
the exam date I purchased Oracle ePractice exams. I got 2 tests for $65. I got 84 in the first test and 80 in the second on
first take. So judging from my final score they were good predictors of my preparedness. However, they did not do any thing
towards increasing my knowledge and the explanation they give is pretty minimal. I would say if you need to bench mark your
preparedness then buy these, if you are looking for a study tool I would say look else where.
I scored @ 80 % on the Cade and Sheil mock (the Qs at the end of each chapter) so, in retrospect that was a good predictor of my future score.
I do not have much experince in Security related topics and was very weak in questions related to various Hack attacks.
That was until I found the cheat sheets at:
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/XSS_(Cross_Site_Scripting)_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet
You will find many more cheatsheets at this site.
In the final test I got a perfect score in security related questions.
Now a week long break and then start prep for Step 2..
