If there’s one thing to be said about programmers, they have a lot of dreams. There’s
Silicon Valley, for one. Then there’s the money that entices. And then, there’s that desire
to get certified by the market leaders which, in effect, is the sole route to making the other
wishes happen.
I’m a programmer, with those dreams and desires. Which is also why I wanted to get
certified by one such leader – Sun Microsystems, the creators of Java.
Why Sun? Because its certification has become a requisite for many programming jobs in
India, as well as abroad. Wanting it is, as with everything else, merely the beginning. I had
loads of questions. How much would it cost to get certified? Where could I give the
certification exams in India? Where could I find out about the kind of objectives on which I
would be tested? Where and what would I have to study? Which books would I have to refer
to? What would the test be like?
My answers came via the Internet.
My first stop was the Sun Microsystems certification Web site. Sun conducts exams for both, Java
and Solaris platforms. So before you decide to register for the exam,
it’s important to decide which
platform you would like to be tested on. You can purchase an examination voucher from
your local Sun Educational Services office, the addresses to which can be found here:
http://suned.sun.com/USA/certification/globalcontacts.html
You can even contact your local Prometric Testing Centre, where you will be giving your
exam. The address for these centres are available at http://www.prometric.com or
http://www.2test.com.
After registration, candidates will have to inform the centres 15 days before the preferred
date for the exam. This date can obviously be decided upon only after you get your Java
fundamentals in order.
A good way of doing this is to try a couple of mock tests. Sites like JavaRanch
, for example, offer these tests to make you feel more confident before
choosing an exam date. There are also loads of tips on giving these exams at JCHQ
along with tutorials.
Other interesting sites that should help include JavaPrepare
and Worldonline Java.
Here’s a tip. Apart from these sites and the plethora of information they provide, there’s a
book called The Java Language Specification written by James Gosling and others. It’s a
tome I would readily recommend, and it can be downloaded at the Sun site
If you prefer working offline, JavaRanch also lets students
download exam simulation software for practice. In fact, some of these are actually tougher
than the Sun Certification Test.
That done, the only thing left is to get in all the practice you can, along with a thorough knowledge of the
API -- specially IO and Util packages. Thanks to what you get online, info about the test is easy to come by.
What you score eventually depends on what you put into it.
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