Developer Certification FAQ version 1.0
1. How do I start, are there books I should read?
Yes read Complete Java Certification Study Guide by RHE. Roberts Heller and Ernest.
Actually that's a biased opinion. But there are a number of certification books out
there that cover the SCJD. While they cover the exam, they cannot eXPlicitly write your
assignment, therefore they must come up with ways to teach you RMI or Swing so that
you can use it to complete your assignment. Having one of these books should suffice
in that goal. so having them all I feel is more a waste of time.
They are:
Complete Java Certification Study Guide by RHE.
Java 2 Certification Virtual Trainer by RHE.
Java 2 Certification All-in-One Exam Guide By William Stanek
.
Java 2 Certification Training Guide by Jamie Jaworski.
Java 1.4 and the Sun Certified Developer Exam by Mehran Habibi, Jeremy Patterson, Terry Camerlengo.
NEW VERSION, coming out June 24th, 2002 Java 2 Certification Training Guide by Jamie Jaworski.
2. How do I contact Sun EdUCation?
e-mail: who2contact@central.sun.com.
phone: (800) 422-8020(USA)
I found this contact page.
I believe it has all the phone numbers for all the countries to contact SunEd.
3. How do I sign up for the Assignment?
You need to call Sun Education. See question #2 for contact information
4. How do I download the Assignment?
You need to go to the Galton website, and there is a link to download the assignment.
5. Where can I find link's to SUN's Tutorial for RMI?
RMI Tutorial
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/reallybigindex.Html#rmi
6. Where can I find link's to SUN's Tutorial for SWING?
Swing Tutorial
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/reallybigindex.html#uiswing
7. Why can't I upload my assignment?
Everyone gets this error. The first day you try to upload your assignment, you will
get an error saying that you don't have permission to upload the assignment.
Simply contact SUN-ED via email at who2contact@central.sun.com. . By the next day you will
be able to upload your assignment.
8. Sun says it takes 4-6 weeks to grade my assignment, it has been over 6 weeks.
What should I do?
Up until about a month ago there was a problem with the Essay exam not being uploaded to Sun.
Sun has worked with Prometrics to solve this problem, and has been getting grades out very
quickly. If you do have this problem, start by sending an e-mail to who2contact@central.sun.com
stating that you completed the essay exam on your date, and that you think that the testing
site did not upload your answers.
9. How should I name my submission jar file?
The Galton site has these directions in the upload screen, but here is a quote from that page
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The name of your submission archive file MUST be derived from your Testing ID,
as shown above. Your Testing ID is your 9-digit Social Security Number (U.S. only),
or it might be another alphanumeric combination, e.g. sp1234567 (any country).
Your archive filename MUST BE scjda-AAAAAAAAA.ZZZ, where AAAAAAAAA is your Testing ID,
and ZZZ is the appropriate filename extension for your archive type (zip, tar, or jar).
If you have prepared your archive, please press the 'Continue' button.
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10. How do I find out why I lost points?
You don't.
Sun does not provide you any specific detail as to the reasons for point grading.
They do break down the scoring by sections like
General Considerations (58 points)
GUI (24 points)
User Documentation (20 points)
Server (53 points)
11. Why are there add and delete methods in the data class when we don't need it?
Originally the assignment had an added requirement of creating a conversion program to
convert a text file into a data file like db.db. In order to do this you would have needed
these methods in the Data class.
12. I don't have Access to a UNIX box, do I have to test it on UNIX?
In the Instructions.html document that came with your assignment it states.
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A README.txt file. You must create a single text file (plain ASCII format; Word processor formats are unacceptable) called README.txt that describes to the examiner the following information in exactly the order listed:
* The exact version of JDK you used, including the platform you worked on.
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This could mean that they take into consideration what platform you used and probably try it on that platform.
Many posts have occured about this, and we haven't found any cases where there was a problem
of not having access to a UNIX box.
13. What fields should I include in the GUI's search functionality?
In the instructions.html. It is a little unclear as to the minimum fields necessary to search.
quote:
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The user should be able to select the origin and destination of flights, and the display should update to show only flights that satisfy those criteria. The user must be able to describe enter the string value "any" for the origin, destination, or both, so as to implement a wildcard-like feature.
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Is one statement, which makes you need at least origin and destination a must.
Then it also states
quote:
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For example, the following argument string would select all records describing flights by the SpeedyAir carrier that originate in San Francisco.
"Carrier='SpeedyAir',Origin='SFO'"
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In this example Carrier is also there. Here is where the confusion comes in. In the first statement carrier is not included, but here it is.
My take is to also include carrier.
14. How do I implement the Model-View-Controller pattern for the GUI?
Here is a MVC Pattern Page
http://ootips.org/mvc-pattern.html
Here is the JTable Tutorial at Sun.
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/table.html
Both will show you examples of how to implement the MVC Pattern.
15. How long do I have to complete the assignment?
You have an unlimited time to complete the assignment. The date on your voucher for the assignment has no meaning. If you buy your voucher for the Essay portion of the SCJD, then you will have one year from the date of the Essay Voucher to take the Essay exam. The Essay portion voucher is not related to the assignment. So please don't ever think that you have a year to complete your assignment, because that is untrue.
Mark
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