OCJA and OCJP 6/7 confusion

[Pankaj kr Jaiswal]

i am planning to get certified in java.
i'm confused whether it is compulsory to give associate(OCJA) exam prior to professional(OCJP) and on oracle website nothing has been mentioned about prerequisites for appearing in professional(OCJP) exam...but in case of other exams like DBA its mentioned... help me removing this confusion.
and please also tell me which one is better 6 or 7 ?
Thank you guys...

[K. Tsang]

Welcome to the Ranch.

As you may already know there are many versions of OCP-JP (v5, v6 and v7). Both v5 and v6 DO NOT need prereq. For v7, the OCA-JP is a prereq for OCP-JP.

Which one is better? It depends on you. Going for v7 right from the beginning will allow you to learn all the new features. According to the objectives of the associate exam, it is really a subset of v6 OCP-JP exam.

[Narsimha Manekar]

Pankaj,
I know some one who is in the same path as you are. He just passed his OCJA 5/6. He is about to start his OCP. He is out of college and looking for an entry level job. His objective is to get OCP on his resume quickly and easily that would in turn help him get a job.

There are 3 options.
Oracle Certified Professional exam in Java SE 5, or 6 or 7.
I have copied Exam details and objectives below.
(my personal opinion) I rule out SE7 because
1) you have to pass assoc exam in java 7 (for 5 or 6 you don't have to pass an assoc exam),
2) answer 90 questions in the test (for 5 or 6 you have to answer 60 questions only)
3) there are 12 topics to cover. (for 5 or 6 there are only 7 topics to cover)
One can learn Java 7 without going on certification path.

Left is SE 5 or 6.
OCP SE 6 is valid against SE 5 & 6.
Passing score is 61% (where as for OCP SE 5 it is 70%)

For me decision is a no brainer.

I would pick OCP SE 6 java exam as next target exam, Exam Number: 1Z0-851.
http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=5001&get_params=p_exam_id:1Z0-851&p_org_id=&lang=


I.
Exam Number: 1Z0-853
Associated Certifications: Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 5 Programmer
Duration: 150 minutes
Number of Questions: 60
Passing Score: 70%
Validated Against: This exam has been validated against SE 5.

Exam Topics:
Section 1: Declarations, Initialization and Scoping
Section 2: Flow Control
Section 3: API Contents
Section 4: Concurrency
Section 5: OO Concepts
Section 6: Collections / Generics
Section 7: Fundamentals


Exam Number: 1Z0-851
Associated Certifications: Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 6 Programmer
Duration: 150 minutes
Number of Questions: 60
Passing Score: 61%
Validated Against: This exam has been validated against SE 5 and SE 6.

Exam Topics:
Same as 5


Exam Number: 1Z0-804
Associated Certifications: Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 7 Programmer
Duration: 150 minutes
Number of Questions: 90
Passing Score: 65%
Validated Against: This exam has been validated against SE 7

0. Pass Java Associ exam for SE 7.

1. Java Class Design

2. Advanced Class Design

3. Object-Oriented Design Principles

4. Generics and Collections

5. String Processing

6. Exceptions and Assertions

7. Java I/O Fundamentals

8. Java File I/O (NIO.2)

9. Building Database Applications with JDBC

10. Threads

11. Concurrency

12. Localization


Thanks.

-Rao