I am now Sun Certified Web Component Developer For Java EE 1.4

I am glad again to inform you all that I have just passed Sun Certified Web Component Developer For Java EE 1.4

I have taken exam today (23-Nov-07) at 11:30 AM at Prometric (Unisoft Technologies) in Vizag. I could finish the exam almost 50 minutes before (some questions are really simple, but that's where you get overconfident and lose marks) - the actual time was 175 Minutes. I scored 92%.

Honestly, I was not too pleased with that score, but it is always good to score above 90% and that too when it is Sun Certification Exam.

There is some confusion regarding the exam. It actually consists of 80 questions. But only 70 of them are actually counted for exam. The extra questions are not counted but very much part of the exam. Well it is not possible to know which ones count and which do not. I honestly feel that is adding to confusion. I wish they have only questions that count and no uncounted questions.

Having cleared SCJP 5.0 with 97% last year ( 21-Nov-06), this year I wanted to try another certification exam.
Initially I though of MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist. But finally I wanted to take SCWCD 1.4.

I prepared for about 20 days. I had to do it along with my profession, which takes around 6 hours in a day during November.

I started with SCWCD Exam Study Guide by David Bridgewater. I should say it is ok. Not a great book. In fact it left some of the topics from exam objectives. For example, it didn't talk about variables related to tag files, some web.xml entries etc. There are questions on these topics in the exam.

I have also gone through (if not every page, at least some important chapters) of Head First Servlets and JSP book by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates and Bryan Basham. That is a good book and did discuss certain things that David Bridgewater didn't.

As usual javaranch.com is a good website to get links to mock exams, notes and other details related to certification exam. If you can prepare some notes on your own, keep life cycle diagrams and APIs handy for quick reference.

I have taken good number of mock exams in various websites. But there is some confusion. Some mock exams are outdated. They still talk about questions which are not relevant to SCWCD 1.4 anymore. However, taking mock exams is always important.

Questions from Enthuware exams are good. But SCWCD 1.4 means remembering a lot of API and what is allowed and what is not. Some times, order of things and so on. More work with memory than logic.