How This Book Helps You Get Certified

Exam Cram 2 books help you understand and appreciate the subjects and materials you need to know to pass Sun certification exams. Each Exam Cram 2 book focuses strictly on exam preparation and review. Exam Cram 2 books are not intended to teach you everything you need to know about a technology. Instead, they cover the topics you are likely to encounter on the certification exam. The books are built around the vendor's objectives and the author's experience with the exams.

How This Exam Cram Differs from the Others

This Exam Cram 2 book is different from other Exam Cram 2 books because the certification it prepares you for is a combination of an assignment and essay exam instead of an objective exam. This book's structure is different from other Exam Cram 2 books to better guide you through this certification.

Most of the Exam Cram 2 books also focus on a particular certification exam, but this book focuses on a development project, the main requirement to become a Sun Certified Java Developer. This certification assesses your ability to provide a complete software development life cycle solution for the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) platform.

On this certification exam, Sun is testing you for all phases of the software development life cycle, including analysis, design, development, testing, and implementation of a client/server project. The project includes enhancements to an existing skeleton application as well as new development. The main challenge is to develop strong analytical skills so that you can read the requirements, and design and code to those requirements, no more or less. Sun gives you the requirements, but you design, build, test, and, finally, deploy (that is, submit your project) your application.

Preparing for the Assignment

I recommend beginning your exam preparation by reading the messages at the JavaRanch certification forum (http://www.javaranch.com). I've read more than a thousand of these messages, and the forum helped me narrow the assignment requirements to the core pieces of the puzzle. I learned about a few requirements that weren't in the instructions, but were buried in code comments (javadoc) of the base classes supplied as part of the assignment. Many of the same questions are asked repeatedly on the forum, so you will certainly spot trends. Reading about others' struggles and what they did to overcome them is helpful. Occasionally, you read a posted question, see a response that sounds good and then wham, a moderator shoots the response full of holes for reasons that become clear after you think about it. The moderators, by and large, do a good job of answering so many questions. Sometimes they clash and debate each other on the best way to approach a task. Like a heavyweight boxing match, these exchanges are the best.

As another step in your preparation, take the self-assessment included in this book. This tool helps you evaluate your own knowledge and experience base in terms of the requirements for the Sun Certified Developer for Java 2 Platform. Notice that no J2ME or J2EE is required for this certification. This fact alone reduces the scope of the possible assignment requirements dramatically.

I strongly encourage you to install and configure the software and tools that you'll be tested on. That means downloading and installing the latest Software Development Kit (SDK) for J2SE. Some folk use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), and some don't. Some of you might be interested in tools, so I'll tell you how I recommend you proceed: Skip the fancy IDEs. They are wonderful, admittedly. However, for this assignment, you'll learn more without an IDE. In fact, several posts I read at JavaRanch were complaints about IDE troubles. The IDE either added vendor libraries (which causes an automatic failure on the exam; you'll see this dreaded warning throughout the book) or built the code in a way that made it hard for the evaluator to verify compliance with the assignment requirements. A great IDE is like a friend, but going spartan has its advantages.

After analyzing the requirements, I usually sketch the architecture on paper or use a simple drawing tool, such as Microsoft Excel. Then I write the UML ( please see http://www.objectsbydesign.com/tools/umltools_byCompany.html for an extensive list of products). Many UML tools are available, including ArgoUML (a good open source tool found at http://argouml.tigris.org), my favorite UML freeware. Sometimes I use Microsoft Visio, which has a helpful graphical user interface (GUI) for constructing diagrams with just a click to generate code, but it doesn't generate UML diagrams from code. Whatever you choose, use one to architect the assignment solution.

Then generate the code from within the IDE to lay a clean foundation. Experiment with one if you don't yet have a favorite. Make sure the tool you choose converts UML to Java class definitions, fields, and method signatures. I recommend a good tool for more than the UML-to-code shortcut. The main reason is the clean path of requirements analysis architecture UML skeleton code. The better tools offer UML-to-code functionality and the other way around (round-trip). This capability enables you to adjust the UML and regenerate code, or adjust the code and regenerate the UML. Round and round you go, until it is right. This method saves a lot of time and lays a solid foundation, something your assignment evaluator is sure to notice.

Finally, use a code editor to build the application from the skeleton code. Any code editor is permitted, as long as the code you submit doesn't have vendor- or editor-specific libraries or references. The evaluator must be able to compile your source code. Several editors are available, but make sure you select one with the features you need. For example, Dreamweaver's features are geared toward Web site building, so it isn't the right tool for this assignment. Also, it isn't as strong for Java usage as JBuilder or WebSphere Application Developer (formerly VisualAge), but is much better than a plain text editor. Actually, I used inexpensive UltraEdit (http://www.UltraEdit.com) for the certification, but any code editor with a Java library (one that highlights keywords) will do. Hands-on experience is king, so crank out the application manually, and you'll have more fun.