Customer Reviews

Complete Java2 Certification Study Guide

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

If you memorize everything in this book, you'll pass with NO flying colors. There are typos and mistakes in the examples. There are worse typos and mistakes in the chapter review questions. The sample exams on the CD are just one exam repeated 4 or 5 times, but with extremely slight changes. All the reviews and sample tests together do not come anywhere near to imitating the questions on the test (SCJP). Once you have memorized everything in the text and examples (correcting all the typos and errors along the way), and can answer all the review and sample test questions 100%, you're still only going to get a minimal passing grade on the SCJP test.

This book is very, VERY helpful. However, be sure to do additional studying outside of this book. And beware that some of the exam questions on the CD are actually programmed incorrectly, and selecting the correct answer will be marked as INCORRECT. The 'correct' answer they give you will in some cases actually conflict with the explaination for that answer.

Very poor execution, but nonetheless is a very good BASIS for study to pass the SCJP.

I have not yet taken the SCJD, but the text for it (starting at chapter 10) leave a lot to be desired. Again, it's a good starting point, but you should do more studying and lots (!) of Swing/RMI/Threading practice in beyond what the book covers, before taking your test. It's description of RMI does leave a lot to be desired.

Firstly, let's be clear what this book is - and is not.
It is NOT a teach-yourself-java book. It is assumed that you already know Java. The goal of this book is to get you through the SCJP exam. To pass the exam, you need to know by rote many details that you would just look up when you are actually programming (I speak as someone who has done this professionally for many years.)
Some of the criticisms in other reviews may be because the reviewers expected to learn Java from scratch with this book. EG the coverage of Generics is minimal (6 pages by the way - not 2 paragraphs as someone stated); but you do not need huge knowledge of Generics in the exam.

The book is on the whole well-organised to cover the information you do need to know. I would say this book could be ONE useful tool - but do not rely on it entirely. I chose it because I wanted to do the latest version of the SCJP exam (Java 1.5 also known as Java 5). At the time this was the ONLY book of its kind covering the 1.5 features.

If there are now other books I would recommend you consider those. Why? Because as others have said, this book is full of annoying errors. Mostly these are not too serious - and you can usually spot them if you are intelligent enough not to automatically believe everything you read. EG. A question has 4 answers A-D. The book tells you the correct answer is E. Yes there are lots like that. In fact most of the errors seem to be in the tests & answers. (I guess this keeps you alert!)

There are also some real howlers. EG "the method clone() is declared in the Cloneable interface". NO - it is declared by class Object - Cloneable is a 'marker' interface without any methods. Or "the Swing GUI event-handling thread is a daemon thread". This is simply false, and you can prove that in 5 minutes by writing a simple program to check. Luckily there aren't too many like this (or I failed to spot them!)

The other warning I would give is that although the questions are not much easier than the real ones, they are much quicker to read & understand. I always completed these tests in about 2/3 of the allocated time. In the real exam I only just had time to finish all the questions.

Interestingly, Sybex have an errata page on their website, but there are hardly any errors documented. I have seen other websites that list the errata and complain that they have been sent to Sybex but ignored. I expect Sybex are simply too embarrassed!

The last part of the book contains hints for the NEXT java exam - the Java Developer exam. There is actually some pretty good advice in there. EG don't make your application too clever - you will probably lose points instead of gaining them.

Overall, my advice is to get a better book that does the same job - if you can.
Oh yeah - I got 79% which is a very comfortable pass.

I passed SCJP 5.0 by reading this book. However, some of the new material is covered in isolation. I'd like to see more examples, such as of interaction between method overloading/overriding and variable arguments, interaction between overloading/overriding and Generics, and examples of overloading/overriding combined with boxing/unboxing.

Also, the password provided for the electronic version of the book on the CD is invalid (but see errata on Sybex web site for the solution to this problem).

This book is not a good way to prepare for the 5.0 exam. It's just the 1.4 book with a couple of extra paragraphs added. The new language features are not properly covered. The section on generics is ridiculous. Do not rely on this book and don't use it as the sole means to prepare yourself.
On top of that there are just so many errors in the book, its just an insult! Use it for one thing only!

I read the 3rd edition of this book in preparation for the Java programmers exam - its an old version, but I read it since a colleague had it handy. There's a lot of information in this book, but too much of it is incorrect for my liking. In some sections there are serious errors on nearly every page. If it was a 1st edition book it might be understandable, but how can a book like this get to its third edition with so many mistakes? If you're an experienced Java programmer, you'll probably just laugh at the errors (as I did), but if you really want a book to learn Java to pass the exam, then I suggest you try another one - this book will only confuse you and make things worse.

The fifth edition of this book has really big typos. For instance, the chapter introductions sometimes promise to discuss topics that aren't discussed anywhere in the entire book. Furthurmore, they proceed to ask review questions about topics not covered.

Thankfully, that only happen a few times.

What's even more frustrating, however, is the number little errors that riddles the whole document. Take, for example, the review questions. Most of the time they're fine, but sometimes they're misleading or just plain wrong. If that happened once or twice, that might be forgivable, but it seems like every chapter has something offensive to offer.

The true tragedy about this book is two-folds: first, at this point in time, it's the only thing available that covers the new test. Secondly, the book has become progressively worse with each new edition. I have the second edition of this study guide and it atleast didn't contain the gapping holes this edition has.

Maybe future editions will fix a lot of the problems, but until then I'd stay away from this book.

I bought this book to prepare for SCJP 1.5. However, neither the content nor the coverage is enough. The 4 mock exams provided in the CDs are just copies of the diagnostic test.
If you are preparing for SCJP 1.4, there are lot many good books in the market and if you are preparing for SCJP 1.5, don't just rely on this, though it may help you cover 50% of the syllabus.

This is not a study guide for SCJP 5.0 as you will quickly learn when you view the section on generics. The SCJP test contains a significant number of questions on generics, the most dramatic change to Java in a decade. This book but two paragraphs on that important topic and neither paragraph is worth reading. If you want to fail SCJP, then use this book as your primary information source.

The book does provide some high-level overview of Java 1.5 features, and that's where it stops. It doesn't provide anywhere near enough detail and application to be used as either a test preparation tool or as a language reference.

I regret purchasing this book and would not recommend it to anyone, even if it were free.

The item came without a CD which is important when you buy such kind of book.
So, i am not able to rate it as good as the product I received was NOT complete as described....

vM