The truth about some Sun Java certifications

OK,

I did post this one on the famous JavaRanch forum, but it was twice deleted by the moderators, the second time without any explanation.

I am a regular Java developer, with both Java SE and Java EE experience. Recently i discovered those Java certifications, which are offered by Sun, after passing successfully a test-based exam. I became very fond of them. Sun is a big name, and such certificate, i thought, would mean a lot to any employer, and a lot to my personal professional pride and self confidence. It would be a great proof of one's knowledge.

I passed SCJP 6 with 86%, and after half a year, i passed SCBCD 5 with 81% score. I studied really hard. The SCJP 6 was OK, since there was a dedicated book that covered all the exam objectives, and i entirely concentrated on this book.

With SCBCD 5 things were different. There still isn't a dedicated book out there. I read "Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API" book from Mike Keith, and Merrick Shincariol - for learning the JPA 1.0 stuff, and also "Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0" book by Bill Burke and Richard Monson-Haefel, for the EJB 3.0 stuff. From time to time, i used to take a look at the corresponding specifications, its inevitable.

Of course, i came across Mikalai Zaikin's "SCBCD 5 study guide" and it was really a great reading. It covered all the exam objectives, and it was kind of spec extraction.

I have two years experience in server side EJB development, and i am participating in a professional team that develops EJB 3.0 container.

However, my results were kind of lousy - all other colleagues scored at least 94%, most of them >= 96%. There were even cases of 100%. I thought that i was not that well prepared. And most of them studied at most for 4-5 days, while i studied for 4 weekends and 10 days in a row right before the exam.

Recently i grasped the whole picture.

There are companies that offer you exam simulators at a reasonable price. I took a look at the simulator for SCBCD 5 exam that one colleague of mine gave me with a smile (after my exam). It consisted of more than 300 sample questions, together with the correct answers.
What was my surprise, as i saw that more than 80% of all the real questions from my exam, were there, on the simulator !

I was totally shocked! How much an exam result is worth of, when almost all of its questions could be known long before the exam ? And totally legally ? Without any doubt of cheat ! You could easily pass by simply memorizing all the questions and right answers, without actually having real knowledge on the particular problematic area.

The total scheme is quite unfair and needs to be reconsidered. It's corrupted. The very idea of getting certified is brutally compromised.

However, this is somehow understandable. There is a huge interest in those certificates, and how could you invent and create hundreds of thousands of original, genuine, pairwise different exams ? Each one of them consisting of 61 questions ? Impossible. The process has to be somehow automated, and this leads to this sad consequence, that all the questions are known long before the exam.

I am speaking for : SCJP 6 and SCBCD 5. (For SCJP 5 too)

But after all, this has to be changed. It is simply not fair. I don't mind people selling whatever tools for exam preparation - i actually support this. But real exam questions should not be included in those mock exams.

Without having any arguments, i was told that the same is the situation for the certification exams for other two very big IT companies, but i won' tell names since i really don't have a proof.

I really don't understand JavaRanch. My latest post didn't offend anyone. I just shared the truth, which is known to a lot of people, and not known to even more. I am not blaming anyone! I don't have any legal knowledge, and i couldn't accuse anyone of anything, even if i wanted to :)
And i am not talking about any cheat tools ! Those simulators are officially sold, and this is totally legal.

Obviously the JavaRanch fellows have some significant problems with clarifying the meaning of freedom of speech, and with having decent definition of what is allowed to be posted there and what is not (once they tell you some arguments, later you post again, this time conforming to the rules, and you get deleted again).


And, yes, i created this blog just for this post ! :)