Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 7 Programmer Boot Camp

We had our first meeting last night of the boot camp for the Greenville Java Users Group (GreenJUG) for Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 7 Programmer certification. This is based on the work we have done for the SCJP for Java SE 6 which was very successful. We have run three previous boot camps with great success. Although a number of people attend the boot camp, not very many take the exams. We do have a great success rate for those who attempt it: 11/11 (100%).  We hope to be able to continue the same streak going forward.

Last night we covered Chapter 10 - Development from the SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 6 Exam 310-065 book. I have not found any published books on SE 7 certification so we are using this book in the interim. Additionally, we are adding material to cover the gaps including material from Preparation for Java Programmer Language Certification.

Over the next few weeks I will publish our code to the Java Boot Camp project on Java.net. I will also publish my slides with a CC license. All coding modules going forward will be done using Apache Maven and are developed on NetBeans. Current Java code in the bootcamp was developed with NetBeans, but are not Apache Maven projects.

Exam Tip

Here are some quick rules for code questions on the exam.

• Does the code compile?
• Does the code run?
• What is the output?

If you can answer these questions before looking at the answers, you have the code portion of the exam beat! Here is an example from last night. Please note that it is obfuscated for a reason, and does not represent good coding practices. So when you examine the code, see if you can answer the questions above. This will likely be harder than anything you can expect on an exam.