Oracle recently announced their new Java 25 Certification Exam 1Z0-831. [Yes, we are working on the certification study guide book] I took it this morning and passed with a 74% (I don’t try for a good score; I try to take it quickly after it comes out. In this case, I took it a few days after getting back from a trip to California. I only slept 5.5 hours last night (got home late from train delays). So I was a bit tired. But I passed and that’s what matters.

If you read my blog post about the Java 21 exam, you know there was significant time pressure. That is fixed on the Java 25 exam. I had sufficient time to go slowly and still had about half an hour left at the end which I could have used to review my answers. (I choose to turn it in without reviewing because I felt a little dizzy; probably from using the computer right when I woke up after insufficient sleep.)

Checking in

Oracle changed how they do exams since the Java 21 exam came out. (You saw a person as proctor.) The new system is described here and much better. I used it when taking Oracle cloud exams and it is the system in use now for the Java 25 exam. It comes with an online whiteboard.

The exam

While there were still some long questions, it was faster to read the code. It was either read some code and state the output (so only one set of code to read) or multiple answers with code where it was easier to tell the differences. Also there were less long questions so I didn’t feel time pressure.

Looking back I had 16 minutes left after the Java 21 exam. While I had more time left over here, the big difference is I went super slow this time while last time I had to rush to get that time. I knew I was tired and didn’t want to make silly mistakes.

About 5 questions took about 10 seconds to load. That feels like forever during an exam! And it was before 8am in the morning local time so it wasn’t a lot of people using the internet. I hadn’t had that problem on past exams.

For content, I got a good mix of questions spanning the objectives. Not as many Java 22-25 questions as I expected but that could be luck of the draw.

After the exam

I removed the “Secure Companion” app and Proctorio Chrome plugin. from my machine. It has a lot of power so I like it not being there.

I tried going to the CertView page to get my badge but got a 502 error. Will try again in the future. I used Chrome as Safari on Mac didn’t let me expand the menus in the past.

To see my exam details:

• Expand “Exam Results” on left navigation
• Click “Exam History” on left navigation
• Click “Results” on this exam on the right side
• This downloads a PDF showing which objectives you got a question wrong on

For credentials, expand “Credential Management” on left navigation. You can then download a certificate or badge. There are also links to post on LinkedIn or email a link to verify your credential. I then went on Linked in and added a credential including the credential URL.