My primary reason for posting this is to get an idea of how different the OCPJP 8 (1Z0-809) exam is compared to the
OCAJP 8 (1Z0-808) exam and to start preparing for the OCPJP 8 exam. I understand that the OCPJP is a lot tougher, but also wanted to understand the format compared to the OCAJP exam. But first, I just wanted to briefly share my experience with the OCAJP exam that I took a week ago and passed with a
92%...
The two resources I used (both excellent, might I add) for preparing for the OCAJP 8 exam were:
1) OCA: Oracle Certified Associate
Java SE 8 Programmer I Study Guide: Exam 1Z0-808 by Jeanne Boyarsky and Scott Selikoff
2) Enthuware mock exams for OCA-JP-I SE 8 1Z0-808
As many have already stated, the mock exams from both resources mentioned above are more challenging than the actual exam. The only thing I wish I had done while taking these mock exams was time myself. The actual exam contains 70 questions with 2 hours 30 minutes to complete. I was able to get through all the questions on the actual exam, but I only left myself 10 minutes at the end to check the questions I had marked. There was one question on the exam regarding access modifiers that I felt I spent more time than I should've because even though the question indicated to "Select the two correct answers", I could see a third option being correct as well. When I viewed my exam results on CertView, I noticed one of the objectives it said I got wrong was "Apply access modifiers". It's most probably for a different question I missed altogether, but not sure if anyone else had seen something similar. Other than that, I didn't see anything on the OCAJP exam that wasn't covered in the resources I used while preparing.
Now, on to the OCPJP 8 exam. Based on the Oracle website, it says the OCPJP 8 exam contains
85 questions with 2 hours 30 minutes to complete. Now, this makes me a tad bit nervous especially since I felt like I needed nearly the entire 2.5 hours to answer
70 questions on the OCAJP exam. I then read a random post online saying that the OCPJP 8 exam is "more performance oriented and not just about the syntax and programming features." If this is true, what does this mean? I know the OCAJP exam had quite a few questions where the answer choices were "Code fails to compile on line
n" or "Exception is thrown at runtime". Does this mean that there won't be as many questions on the OCPJP that require us to analyze the code snippet and determine if there are code compilation issues or runtime exceptions thrown?
I'm planning to use the OCPJP version of the resources above to prepare myself for the OCPJP exam since they were very helpful in my OCAJP exam preparation, but feel free to suggest any other resources (or just advice in general) to help me prepare for the OCPJP exam. Thanks in advance!