Preparing for the Oracle Certified JAVA Associate Exam
The search for a Russian guide to submit to OCAJP 7 was not successful, so I decided to write my own.
What kind of certificate is described in this video. Everyone decides to hand over or not for himself, but this certificate is basic in the Oracle hierarchy for those interested in Java.
For myself, I decided to take OCP to firstly organize knowledge, and secondly to increase attractiveness for employers.
It started as usual with reading CodeRanch . When I started to prepare books on OCA 7 it was not in nature yet. An official guide has now appeared . But given the price tag ($ 30), I would still refrain from buying. Now I will tell you why.
Firstly, most of the information necessary for handing over is covered in preparation for SJCP 6, most of which are freely available. The forums scare that a lot of JLS JAVA 7 has been added to the exam. Actually, there aren’t so many. In the exam itself, I only encountered the ability to use String objects as arguments in a switch expression. In any case, you can learn the chips added in the new version of the JVM in one evening, since there are not many of them and for the exam there is a fairly general understanding.
I began my journey to JAVA with this wonderful book, but it will not be suitable for the exam.
I passed 91%, I used the following material:
The preparation plan was as follows:
It ended up like this:
I took the closed headphones with me in order to not listen to the surrounding noise, they were really very useful. Although there weren’t a lot of people in the test class, they constantly went in and out, which didn’t set up for a productive way. The exam lasts 150 minutes, I did not want to be distracted. Headphones perfectly cut off all the noise in the audience.
After answering all the questions I still had 40 minutes left, I managed to double-check. Found one annoying mistake.
After the test, there were one positive feeling, it’s nice to put an end to the end of the preparation. Prior to that, I passed certification from another vendor, there were constantly some problems with the software for testing and with the computer on which the test passed. This time, too, with each fading during the loading of the question, the heart began to beat faster. But everything is OK. Software from PearsonVUE wasn’t buggy, all testing passed without a hitch.
Good luck to all! Next time I’ll talk about the preparation and delivery of OCPJP 7.
What kind of certificate is described in this video. Everyone decides to hand over or not for himself, but this certificate is basic in the Oracle hierarchy for those interested in Java.
For myself, I decided to take OCP to firstly organize knowledge, and secondly to increase attractiveness for employers.
It started as usual with reading CodeRanch . When I started to prepare books on OCA 7 it was not in nature yet. An official guide has now appeared . But given the price tag ($ 30), I would still refrain from buying. Now I will tell you why.
Firstly, most of the information necessary for handing over is covered in preparation for SJCP 6, most of which are freely available. The forums scare that a lot of JLS JAVA 7 has been added to the exam. Actually, there aren’t so many. In the exam itself, I only encountered the ability to use String objects as arguments in a switch expression. In any case, you can learn the chips added in the new version of the JVM in one evening, since there are not many of them and for the exam there is a fairly general understanding.
I began my journey to JAVA with this wonderful book, but it will not be suitable for the exam.
I passed 91%, I used the following material:
- K&B SCJP 6 study guide . Repeatedly mentioned here. The book is really wonderful: easy to read, well-structured, after each chapter there are exercises to consolidate the material
- Tests for passing SCJP 6 from here . But I will not advise them, because questions there are quite outdated.
- Mock exams by Enthuware ($ 10)
The preparation plan was as follows:
- Read Chapters 1-5 and 10 of K&B. Chapters 6 and 7 to read selectively in accordance with the topics of the real exam
- Solving tests for SCJP 6 on the same topics (as I said is not very useful)
- Tests from Enthuware (6 tickets, 500+ questions)
It ended up like this:
- I tried to read a chapter from a book a day, it turned out 2 days per chapter, along with solving tasks and small practical tasks
- Mock-tests at first seemed too easy, but as it turned out later, each ticket was simply aimed at several specific topics. The full picture took shape only after all tickets were resolved
- I initially planned to click the tests for $ 10 in a week, but in the end it turned out for only two. The plan was the same as with tickets to the traffic police: the ticket is resolved for the first time, then all the mistakes made are resolved and resolved again.
- Compared to questions in a real exam, questions in tests are much more complicated. If from the 1st time it was not possible to solve the ticket by 60-70%, it is better to read the book again. You won’t be able to learn how to get the same tickets in the traffic police; the questions in the tests are completely different from the real ones
- However, the emphasis there is on the same topics as on the real exam. Most tricky questions were about “String, StringBuffer, StringBuilder” and “Handling Exceptons”. The authors of the tests in the answers often hint that some topics that are not indicated by Oracle as mandatory for preparation are actually present at the exam. It really is. I had a few questions about the Garbage Collector. Annoying questions such as “how to put a short in byte” on knowledge of casts and dimensions of Data Types in JAVA with which the test on a real exam was full
- Before the exam, while riding the subway, I re-read Summary to all the chapters from K&B 6. Several times it was very useful to me, there were questions tied to very subtle nuances
I took the closed headphones with me in order to not listen to the surrounding noise, they were really very useful. Although there weren’t a lot of people in the test class, they constantly went in and out, which didn’t set up for a productive way. The exam lasts 150 minutes, I did not want to be distracted. Headphones perfectly cut off all the noise in the audience.
After answering all the questions I still had 40 minutes left, I managed to double-check. Found one annoying mistake.
After the test, there were one positive feeling, it’s nice to put an end to the end of the preparation. Prior to that, I passed certification from another vendor, there were constantly some problems with the software for testing and with the computer on which the test passed. This time, too, with each fading during the loading of the question, the heart began to beat faster. But everything is OK. Software from PearsonVUE wasn’t buggy, all testing passed without a hitch.
Good luck to all! Next time I’ll talk about the preparation and delivery of OCPJP 7.