Author Archives: Jeanne Boyarsky

Amazon now offers online proctored exams

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We recently wrote about Oracle’s at home proctored exams. Amazon is now starting to do the same. They announced it last month. As of now, it is only valid for the practitioner exam. Taking the exam anytime of the day or night is a nice feature to offer.

It’s offered from PearsonVUE so the rules are pretty similar to Oracle’s. See our blog post from when Oracle started offering it for our take. I think more people fall into the category of the online proctored exam being useful for AWS though. Here’s why:

Computer requirements

Same as in the Oracle blog post

Room requirements

Same as in the Oracle blog post. Still a problem for me because it is a physical layout issue.

Privacy

Same as in the Oracle blog post. Prepare your family/roomates so you have a room to yourself.

No Breaks

The AWS exam is significantly shorter than the OCP. Which means you aren’t likely to need a bathroom break and not being to take on is a non-issue.

No writing

This is still a problem for me. I write a lot down during exam. Facts I think i”ll forget. Questions I want to go back to. What I want to remember between questions in case one question answers another. I also like to track how many I am unsure of because it gives me confidence that I’m not failing.

Depending on your test taking style, not writing things down may be a non-issue though. It’s not like you are tracing complex loops here!

My thoughts

While I can’t do this, I think it is a good option for folks who have more space and/or live further away from a testing center. It’s definitely an easier sell than on the OCP!

Should I take the 1Z0-816 or 1Z0-817?

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Update (11/05/2020): Read The 1Z0-819 Exam page to learn how you can easily our Java 11 Study Guides to prepare for Oracle’s 1Z0-819 Exam, as well as the 1Z0-817 Upgrade Exam.

Oracle has several paths to certification. Those who hold older versions of the certification have choices of what to take. This post summarizes your options along with my opinion on which path you should choose and why. Also see What Does it Mean to be Java SE 11 Developer Certified.

Scroll down to the section that matches you:

  • No Java Certification or SCJP 5 or earlier
  • OCP 6, OCP 7 or OCP 8
  • OCA 7 or OCA 8
  • OCA 6
  • Passed the OCP 7 or 8 level exam, but not the OCA 7/8 level exam.

You currently hold: No Java Certification or SCJP 5 or earlier

Your Options:

My recommendation: No choices here

You currently hold: OCP 6, OCP 7 or OCP 8

Your Options:

My recommendation: I recommend the upgrade exam. There’s a good number of topics on the part 2 exam that aren’t on the upgrade exam. So your overall effort is lower for the upgrade exam.

In the past, the upgrade exam was harder than the part 2 exam because “all the easy questions that haven’t changed from past versions of Java” don’t appear on the upgrade. However, they don’t appear on the part 2 exam either. Now they appear on the part 1 exam. The three exams are more equal in difficulty now.

You do have to study modules more for the upgrade exam because the modules topics from both part 1 and part 2 appear on it. But getting to skip a number of other objectives makes this worth it if you seek to minimize your studying.

By contrast, you will miss some topics with the upgrade route. If you want to learn as much as possible, taking the part 1/part 2 route will advance that goal.

You currently hold: OCA 7 or OCA 8

Your Options:

My recommendation: By the same reasoning as the previous entry, taking just part 2 is the easiest route. However, you will miss some topics. Some you might want to take both exams to learn more and build your foundational knowledge.

You currently hold: OCA 6

OCA 6 is no longer a valid pre-req to the 1Z0-816

Your Options:

My recommendation: The least expensive route is definitely to just take part 2. However, the OCA 6 was nothing like the OCA 7/8. It’s a really big jump to take just part 2 so I recommend taking both.

You currently: Passed the OCP 7 or 8 level exam, but not the OCA 7/8 level exam.

Your Options:

My recommendation:I recommend taking part 1 and the upgrade exam. Most of the topics that are “left out” of the upgrade exam were on the OCP 7 and OCP 8 so you’ve already got those covered.

What does it mean to be OCP Java SE 11 Developer Certified?

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Update (11/05/2020): Read The 1Z0-819 Exam page to learn how you can easily our Java 11 Study Guides to prepare for Oracle’s 1Z0-819 Exam, as well as the 1Z0-817 Upgrade Exam.

I wrote a similar blog post for the Java 8 OCP cert. There are different requirements for what you need to know in terms of which exam path you took in order to take the cert. This post summarizes the differences.

Also see Should I take 1Z0-816 or 1Z0-817

The three main paths

Oracle has several paths for one to become OCP Java 11 certified. The major ones are:

There are a few others paths like you took the OCP 8 and not the OCA 8. I’m not covering those paths as they are less common. (Officially OCA 8 was a pre-req for OCP 8. You can take the exams in either order, but most people went in the prescribed order.) If you took an “unusual” path, see Oracle’s list of options.

What one would expect

It seems reasonable to assume some things here.

  1. People taking the OCP 11 directly should be tested on the topics that entail being Java 11 certified.
  2. People taking the upgrade from OCP 6, 7 or 8 should be tested on just the topics that were added since they took the exam.
  3. People taking the exam after the OCA 7 or 8 are tested on OCP level knowlege.

These assumptions turn out to not match what Oracle actually did. The rest of this blog post describes the surprises.

Major topics people who are OCP 6 certified can avoid being that those starting a with Java 11 cert must know

  1. Annotations
  2. Concurrency (beyond threads)
  3. JDBC
  4. Secure Coding

My thoughts: This is a lot of topics to be able to skip! There’s probably a bunch of smaller things, but these four are plenty big in their own right!

Major topics people who are OCP 7 certified can avoid that those starting with a Java 11 cert must know

  1. Annotations
  2. Secure coding

My thoughts: Less than OCP 6.

Major topics people who are OCA 7/8 certified can avoid that those starting with a Java 11 cert must know

  1. Some topics that used to be on the OCP 8

Summary

I like that Oracle isn’t covering topics on the upgrade exam that have been removed form the OCP 11. But there’s a lot of topics you can skate by without knowing if you take the upgrade exam with an older certification.