Customer Reviews

OCP Java SE 6 Programmer Practice Exams (Exam 310-065) (Certification Press)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I love the quality of McGraw Hills books and specially the ones to prepare the Java Certify exams. I'm also a Kindle user with very good experiences reading books in Kindle versions.

But this one is completely useless. As you may know, Kindle books are actually a kind of HTML code (with labels like: '<'html'>', '<'body'>', '<'p'>', etc.). Well, Java ALSO use these kind of labels for its GENERIC parameters, so when you open this book in Kindle version you lose every generic argument (and there are a lot of them in the exams) because the book reader thinks they are HTML labels and don't show them.
This problem also affects to EVERY comparation expression which uses the characters ">" or "<" or ">=" or "<="...

So, as you can check in the Free Sample here in Amazon, in the question 9 of the Assestment Test 1, you can find a code fragment like this:

6. List c0 = new List();
7. List c1 = new ArrayList();
8. List c2 = new ArrayList();
9. List c3 = new ArrayList();
10. List c4 = new ArrayList();
11. ArrayList c5 = new ArrayList();

Where lines 7,8,9 and 10 supposedly are different, and you don't see it but all of those lines are actually using generic parameters
Big joke that Amazon is selling this as an exams book. I regret so much of buying this version. I'll try to get Amazon correct the book or give me a solution, because this is unacceptable.

UPDATE (2010-12-20): Amazon has contacted me and they will refund the money of the book. Anyway, I'll leave this reply here to let everyone who think on buying the Kindle version of the book know about this issue, and to encourage them to CHECK FIRST the free sample here in Amazon to see if they have already fixed it.

Thanks so much to Amazon and their quick response and to the author who paid attention on this the same moment I wrote it.

Disclosure: I was one of the tech reviewers of this book so I'm probably biased. I'm reviewing it anyway and saying *why* I liked things.

1) Lots of questions
2) Clear explanations
3) Advice on how to study
4) Similar looking problems that test different things so your brain doesn't memorize "the answer is 'a' as fast"
5) Harder questions than are on the test and a mapping to to how it would relate to an actual score.

Note this is not like the thick SCJP book that is a study guide to the exam. This book is virtually all practice exams.

There is no doubt that studying for the OCJP is a difficult task for most of us. The authors of this exam prep companion say it upfront, you must study, take practice exams, and write plenty of code in order to be prepared for the exam.

The OCJP practice exam guide is a perfect study companion; there are many questions that specifically target the types of topics you will find on the exam. The answers will provide the information you need to learn from your mistakes and become better prepared for the real exam.

I highly recommend this guide.

The mock exam questions in this book are much harder than the real exam. What I mean is that you can waste a lot of time with very tricky questions in this book or you could go to CertPal.com and get 3 mock exams that don't waste as much of your time.

Chapter 4 is the best part of this book. It contains a number of programming exercises.

I suggest to use the book for the OCP preparation and take all pratice exams when you think you are ready to take the real exam.

I passed the exam with 98% and while this book had a part to play, in the hind sight, I feel it wasn't money well spent, specially since I already had the SCJP Study Guide by the same Authors. I wanted to practice some more questions before the actual exam and based on the positive reviews I bought this book for that purpose. I must say the book tries to make it convenient to help the user reach to specific question(s) since it contains the same question with and with out answer and has a mapping of exam objectives and the questions. Of course, it can't escape the limitations of a book, but there are some things I wish the authors had made more exam like.

The actual exam tells you the number of correct options that you have to select, this book doesn't. Apparently, this was done to "help" the reader learn better, but I found it really frustrating because it makes the questions really hard to answer in the given time limit. This leaves you totally clueless as to how fast or slow you should go in the actual exam.

My second biggest gripe that that the proportion of very twisted questions seemed high. They are unrealistic as compared to the actual exam. Some questions have as many as 8 options! In the actual exam I got may be a question or two with 6 options. One can argue that it is all for your own good and I think it is ok for the other book I mentioned before, but I was expecting more exam like stuff from this book.

I am not sure if the other reviewers actually used the book while studying for and before taking the actual test or just read the book casually and posted 5 start reviews here because my experience with the book was very different. I finally bought exam simulator from Enthuware for $20 which was exactly what I was looking for. I wish I had bought it before spending $40 (including shipping to SA) on this book.

My book came fast, was very useful and Jason (the seller) even followed up with me to make sure I was fully satisfied. Better than a lot of large companies.

A very useful book,before taking the exam. The questions in the book are tougher than what actually appears in the exam. The book covers every topic.The book helped me crack the actual exam with ease in the first attempt.

You need to complete a study guide book BEFORE you attempt the practice exams in this one. I recommend traditional hardcopy rather than Kindle or pdf. You should read this away from your computer, your browser, your IM, text messages, email and Facebook. Only go to the computer when you need to 'google' some supplementary articles or documentation.
The questions in the practice exams are more difficult and have many more 'gochas' than those of the real exam. In the end I took each question one at a time, answered it to the best of my ability in 3 minutes (oh, by the way, you only get 2.5 minutes per question in the actual test--2.5 hours total) then reviewed the topic in the study guide or other material if I got it wrong or detected a weakness. I highlighted the explanations heavily and drew up a bulletted list of Top 10 Gotchas to look out for, which quickly grew to 30. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I was barely scoring 50% on the 3rd practice exam but scored 81% on the actual test. I had not taken the 4th exam because I wanted to keep it in reserve as something new to go over in case I failed my first attempt. As it turned out, I passed handily.

Hello, I'm studying for java exam andm I highly recommend this book.

If you have reasonable experience programming Java 5 or 6 then you'll be able to follow all the topics. I found the material pretty heavy so 15 minutes study every night worked best for me. My only complaint is that the exam is so bloody hard! However Java programmers aren't paid the big bucks without reason - and this exam certainly sorts the men from the boys.

The material seems to cover all of the exam objectives and the pre-requisite stuff falls earlier in the book. Some of the chapters are quite long (I'm looking at you, Generics!!!). I found the authors' style very engaging and a small amount of humor in relevant places relieved the boredom of study. You'll also find numerous sections labelled "Exam Watch" spliced in between the material throughout the chapters and these are invaluable to answering the "gotcha" exam questions correctly.

At the end of each chapter there are some 'test yourself' questions and even though I'm a seasoned java programmer I still found them hard... but that's why I bought a book and I'm really happy with this one. Recommended. Two thumbs up.