Monthly Archives: August 2010

spring 3 certification – skills-guru exam review

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Table of contents for the Spring 3 certification series of posts:

  1. Jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences (Background information)
  2. About the test (includes Scope of the test and Spring 2.5 vs 3.0 exam)
  3. What did I read and how were the resources I tried
  4. My study plan
  5. Skills guru mock exam
  6. What I would recommend as a study plan

Since SpringSource refuses to provide a mock exam or even a few questions, the Skills-Guru tests are the best simulation we have of the environment. As such, they warrant their own section. General notes:

  • While you can retake the exam as many times as you want for free, you can only see the questions you got wrong after completing the test.
  • The mock did correlate with with the amount of time I needed per question. So if you think 90 minutes isn’t much for 50 questions, this is a good way to get used to it. Similarly to the SCEA, I had all the time in the world.
  • They don’t give you percentages by area. I copied all the questions to Word and sub-totaled myself. As tedious as this was, it was useful. Good to know the weaker areas although tedious to put this together. (I wish they gave it automatically.) A LOT of the questions I got wrong were not covered in the class or course materials. This implies the mock creator might not have seen the course materials. Regardless the mock contains many things not on the exam.

Number of questions in each category so you can figure out your subtotal percentages. Ones with stars are categories that don’t appear on the real exam at all.

I also wonder if the same person wrote both tests. The style was different, the difficulty was different, the category names were different and exam #2 had a lot more out of scope content. In any case, comparing the distribution to the real exam, you’ll notice some differences.

Exam 1:

  • Container/Test (14)
  • AOP (6)
  • JDBC (3)
  • Transactions (6)
  • Web/MVC (8)
  • Remoting (6)
  • JMS (3)
  • JMX (3)
  • *SP-EL (1)

Exam 2:

  • Container/Test (13)
  • AOP (6)
  • Database(6)
  • Transactions(2)
  • Web/MVC (5)
  • Remoting (3)
  • JMS (2)
  • JMX (2)
  • *XML(1)
  • *Email (1)
  • *EJB(1)
  • *Resources(1)
  • *Type Conversion(1)
  • *Dynamic Languages(1)
  • *SpEL(1)
  • *JCA(1)
  • *General(1)
  • + 2 others that I failed to record

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Next page: What I would recommend as a study plan

spring 3 certification – recommended study plan

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Table of contents for the Spring 3 certification series of posts:

  1. Jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences (Background information)
  2. About the test (includes Scope of the test and Spring 2.5 vs 3.0 exam)
  3. What did I read and how were the resources I tried
  4. My study plan
  5. Skills guru mock exam
  6. What I would recommend as a study plan
  1. Make sure you understand everything in the course student guide
  2. Look at my study notes (or equivalent if someone else puts up Spring 3 study notes) and make sure everything looks familiar. You don’t have to be able to recite the syntax from memory.
  3. Take the second skill guru exam. (I found the first exam to be a better indicator of readiness with less out of scope content and would have preferred to take it later.) If you pass, skip to step #7. If not you may still pass the real exam, but it is probably better to study more.
  4. Look at the Spring 2.5 exam sample questions to get a feel for the level of difficulty to expect. (Yes, it really was this easy.) Questions harder than this in the skills guru exam shouldn’t cause you to worry.
  5. Do any labs you didn’t cover in class for areas you feel week.
  6. Skim the official reference – only focusing on the sections covered in the class student guide.
  7. Take the BlackBeltFactory exam if you feel you need more practice. If you fail some of the sections, don’t worry – this is harder than the real exam. You want to make sure you know the container/AOP sections cold. The level of difficulty is closer here and it is the lions share of the exam.
  8. Take the first skill guru exam. If you pass, you will definitely pass the real exam. If you don’t pass, pay attention to why. Even on this exam, some questions are out of scope and many are harder than on the real exam.
  9. Good luck!

Previous page: Skills guru mock exam

Spring 3 Certification Week by Week

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Table of contents for the Spring 3 certification series of posts:

  1. Jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences (Background information)
  2. About the test (includes Scope of the test and Spring 2.5 vs 3.0 exam)
  3. What did I read and how were the resources I tried
  4. My study plan
  5. Skills guru mock exam
  6. What I would recommend as a study plan

My study plan

Unlike the SCEA, I actually followed most of my plan. I spent about 10-15 hours a week on this. Here’s what happened: [note this is a list of what I did and not what is good to do; I definitely overstudied. See the “What I would recommend as a study plan” section for what I actually recommend you do. I’ve made the items with the least value for the test in pink and italics. I went on some tangents. Spring even gives the advice to explore and follow one’s curiosity. I certainly did that, but it was for general learning and didn’t help at all for the test.

  1. Week 1
    • Took the four day course
    • Started creating my Spring 3 certification study notes.
    • I made sure could answer all questions in the official Spring 3 study guide immediately after the course – at least on a high level. I didn’t know them all by heart, especially for the later sections, but at least they sounded familiar.
    • Decided to take the test a month after the class and create study plan.
    • Took BlackBeltFactory JDBC exam. Some of the questions are old and many went beyond the scope of the certification. I tried closed book and open book. It provided me with a nice guided tour of the JavaDocs.
  2. Week 2
  3. Week 3
    • Re-read the class student guide
    • Followed up about exam voucher which did not come automatically.
    • Received voucher after following up and registered for Pearson Vue account. It takes up to 24 hours to activate an account – about 12 hours in my case. Pearson Vue picks your user id which ensures I will never remember it. Thanks Pearson. <sarcasm>
    • Noted the voucher expires in January. This is just under 6 months. I was under the impression we had a year!
    • Registered for the exam.
    • Recreated the instructor’s example to remember full lifecycle with details (@PostConstruct vs init-method, and InitializingBean etc). This made it easier for me to remember.
    • Went through thru Spring 2.5 “sample questions” (not multiple choice and doesn’t cover all topics.) I can’t tell how did because some questions you can’t tell what they are getting at. The material wasn’t surprising for container, AOP, JDBC and Transactions. I noted some have nothing to do with Spring like what is ACID. They don’t cover all the topics. At first, I thought the questions were incredibly easy and useless for the exam. In hindsight, they were at a good level.
    • Took Skills-Guru Mock exam #2. Again, see the skills guru section. I got a 62% on my first attempt at this one. Again it worried me for no reason.
    • Started creating a BlackBeltFactory Spring 3 certification exam.
    • Completed the labs that we didn’t cover in class. This didn’t help for the exam, but I wanted to do it anyway.
    • Retook the BlackBeltFactory exams open books to pass.
    • Read the official Spring reference guide chapters 1-7 and 9-12. (8 is on the old way of doing AOP.) I was surprised at how little this helped for the exam given how vital it sounded for the Spring 2.5 exam.
    • Skimmed Gavin’s 2.5 study notes. These are the author’s guess as to what is on the exam. He was a grandfathered candidate and did not take the class. I’m not sure if the notes are so detailed/involved because he was grandfathered or because the 2.5 exam was significantly harder. Either way, don’t let the exam scare you any more than you let the Skills-Guru mocks do!
  4. Week 4
    • Added a lot of BlackBeltFactory questions to think through each topic. It’s a learning style that I like and helpful to others. I also added the Spring 3 category to a lot of relevant existing questions getting me to think about more edge cases. The BlackBeltFactory admits to being significantly harder than the real exam.
    • Read Spring reference guide chapters 13, 15, 19-22. (14 is on O/X, 16-18 more advanced web)
    • Read chapters 9-10 in Spring in Action (3rd edition.) All of this material was too advanced for the test. Note: chapters 11-14 are excluded from what I read because they aren’t published yet. I’m reading the chapters as they come out through MEAP (Manning Early Access Program.)
    • Retook both Skills-Guru exams because I was still thinking they were the level of difficulty of the exam.
  5. Week 4 and a half (I took the test on a Thursday so this would be Monday-Thursday)
    • I felt ready at this point – even given that I thought the exam was much harder. I was still reviewing so I didn’t lose momentum and forget the obscure things that don’t come up in real life. Plus I didn’t want to “just barely fail” because of something silly. It was maddening not having a sense for the level of detail for questions on the the test. Would it be so terrible for Spring Source to provide 5 sample multiple choice questions?
    • Took beta test a few times at BlackBeltFactory (a lot are questions I wrote, but it was a good review – like flash cards). Got between 88% and 100% on all attempts.
    • Re-read my study notes.
    • Review Spring’s 2.5 sample question list to make sure I know everything on it.
    • Took skills guru test one more time – this time took exam 2 first so end with exam 1 (and more confidence.) I got 92% on test 2 and 88% on second test. While this did track well to my real exam score, I had seen the skills guru questions multiple times at this point.
    • Skimmed class student guide one more time

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