Oracle Certified Associate in practice. Preparation for certification

Hi all! Not so long ago, I talked in detail about my experience of passing the lab in Epam. Today I would like to talk about how I passed my first certification from Oracle.

About the exam

Oracle Certified Assciate Java SE Programmer (1Z0-808) is the first step in Oracle certification on the way to becoming a professional Java developer, confirming basic knowledge of the language. The exam is given 2.5 hours, it consists of 70 multivariate questions in English, the passing score is 65%. The list of topics can be found on the exam page in the Review Exam Topics tab. The cost of the exam is $150 .

Goals

To be honest, for a long time I could not decide whether it is worth getting a certificate at all. Many consider this a waste of time, because the questions in the tests do not reflect the level of knowledge, but the level of preparation for a particular exam. There is a widespread opinion about a bunch of trick questions, where instead of curly braces in the code, round ones are written and therefore the code will not compile. However, my pros were:

1. The ability to fill gaps in knowledge, structure the theoretical base, sort everything out.
2. Become a certified specialist, thereby attracting the attention of recruiters from other companies, and use the certificate as one of the arguments for a salary increase.
3. Well, in general, if the employer pays, then why not?

Planning and payment

In order not to be lazy and set some kind of deadline for myself, I decided to immediately pay for the certification and set an exam date in 3 weeks. To do this, you need to find a vendor in your city (usually Pearson VUE), register on their website, as well as on the Oracle website, and link accounts. It is worth paying special attention to the correctness of entering personal data, because it will be possible to edit them only through contacting the support service. In particular, you need to pay attention to the transliteration of your name (Alexander / Aleksandr, etc.) - you need to fill it out as in the documents. After registration, you need to select an exam, a certification center in your city, date / time, and make a payment. There are two payment options: through an invoice issued by Oracle (it is not clear how to pay, there is also an additional 20% commission), or directly through Pearson VUE. It is better to pay through the vendor - it is more convenient and cheaper.

Preparation

For preparation, I used two sources:

1. Book by Skott Selikoff and Jeanne Boyarsky OCA/OCP Java SE 8 Programmer Practice Tests .

   It contains 450 questions and one multi-variant mock exam for 80 questions, as well as explanations. For convenience, you can use this site and solve tests online. This is very convenient - you can immediately find out the correctness of the answer and read the explanations for it, as well as view the overall statistics for all tests. I was already familiar with this book from training at Epam (on the exam before the lab, the questions were just from it), some knowledge was deposited, and the average result for all tests was 79%.

   I have an ambiguous attitude to this book: there are a lot of typos in it, a lot of unnecessary questions with a trick, and in principle, the questions from it are much easier than on the exam itself. Therefore, I advise you not to limit yourself to it when preparing.

2. Trainer from enthuware .

   A six-month subscription to the web version, as well as a perpetual desktop version, cost $10 .

   The essence of the preparation is about the same as in the case of the book from the first paragraph: 600+ questions with explanations. But the questions here are without errors, for each question there are several possible answers, explanations for each question at the end.

   And it's really worth it. The questions from the simulator turned out to be, if not 1 in 1, then as close as possible to the questions from the real exam. So I strongly recommend that you do not spare $10 and get an excellent source for preparation. Here, the average score on the tests I had was 69%.

Exam

On the selected day, you need to arrive at the certification center 20 minutes before the exam. It is important to note that you need to have twoidentity document. I missed this moment and I was just lucky that, in addition to my passport, there was a driver's license in my jacket. Why this is needed - I still do not understand, but, nevertheless, it is worth bearing in mind. After filling in all the documents, you will be asked to put all the things out of your pockets (documents, keys, watches, bank cards, checks, and everything in general) and will be taken to the computer. The exam is recorded on video, they give out a laminated sheet and a marker on which you can make some notes. The exam was difficult. In preparation, I read more than once that tests from enthuware are more difficult than a real exam, and since out of 8 tests from there I failed only one, I came with complete confidence. what I'll sell. In fact, I can't say that the questions were easier. They were similar, but certainly not lighter. There were also no trick questions. I passed the exam with a score of 81%, which I found out immediately after graduation. Within 30 minutes, the results came to the mail, and within 48 hours the certificate itself arrived in electronic form. In the results, you can see a list of topics in which you made mistakes. By the way, here's what the certificate itself looks like:As a result, I can say that I did not regret the time spent on passing the certification. There were a lot of interesting questions in the tests, and the topics (specifically in this exam) are what is used in daily work. I received the badge of a certified specialist, but most importantly, I strengthened my knowledge.