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Summary: Awesome book that keeps getting better!
Review: After taking three weeks of courses on Java 1.1 technologies, I picked up this book and found to my surprise that I still had a long way to go before I could pass the exam. Luckily, Simon and Heller pave the way with a well-organized and highly technical book. They can't give away the content of the test, but they do list the exam objectives in the back of the book so you can gauge your readiness. The sample questions are tough! Unless you've been coding in Java a long time, your weaknesses will become clear to you. That's a good thing when you're serious about preparing for an exam. The included Java Certification Testing Engine will even give you a simulated testing experience. This book does come with a number of minor but annoying errors. To Sybex's credit, they keep making it better with an online errata list (updated regularly) This book is one that you will find yourself referring to long after you pass the exam.
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Summary: Excellent Book for Certification Preparation
Review: Apart from the useless padding of the appendix containing the API (without any useful comments), I found this book to be well organised, clear & concise.
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Summary: Good book but BE CAREFUL
Review: Don't let this book lull you into a false sense of security! A friend and I recently took the test after having studied this book and being able to pass its exam with scores of 95-100%. He failed; I passed by a small margin. This book is excellent and you will need it to pass the exam but it is weak in several areas. When you take the test, you get a print out of how well you did in each area. We correlated ours and rated how well the book covers exam areas. This is the result: 1. Language Fundamentals.................good 2. Operations & Assignments..............good 3. Declarations & Access Control.........poor 4. Flow Control & Exception Handling.....fair 5. Overloading, Overriding, Runtime Type, & Object Orientation..................poor 6. Misc. (don't know what this is).......poor 7. Threads...............................good 8. java.lang package.....................poor 9. java.awt: Components & Facilities.....good 10. java.awt: Layout......................good 11. java.awt: Event Handling..............fair 12. java.awt: Painting....................good 13. java.io package.......................poor The books starts out strong but gets a little spotty later on. You will definately need it to get used to the type of question that the exam asks. It is a very tricky test. You must pay close attention and if you are unsure of yourself, you can easily get suckered into a wrong answer. This is expecially true on the multiple choice questions where you don't necesarily choose one answer, you choose all answers that apply. Get any part of it wrong and you get zero credit for the whole question.
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Summary: A Java Certification Book that Really Delivers
Review: I just passed the Sun's Java 1.1 Programmers test and I owe it all to this book! I found the test pretty hard, but the book was excellent preparation for it. The book is organized around Sun's official list of test objectives and the discussion is entertaining, clear and helpful. The test questions at the end of each chapter are very typical of what's on the test. (In fact a few questions actually did appear on the test that I took.) But that should come as no surprise since Simon Roberts works at Sun and helps write the test questions. Finally, the CD that comes with the book has a tester program that pretty well simulates Sun's computer-based test environment. The tester software is easy to install (it comes with JDK 1.1.3) and works nicely; although I would prefer a graphical interface for the options instead of having to type arcane instructions into the command line. My only quibble is with the numerous typos that abound in the text and sample code. I found the few errata listed on the Sybex update website just scratch the surface. I naively expect that when I pay forty or fifty bucks for a book someone is checking to see that the sample code compiles and runs. Also, the book could have been half the weight if the JDK 1.1.3 API was not included in the appendix. After all, it's all on the CD. Oh, well...
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Summary: Its a very good book
Review: I passed the java certification 1.1 exam last week for the first time.With no java work experience i could pass and thats only with this book.i had prepared for a month.Firstly i studied a java programming book to get to know about java fundamentals(i was clear about fundamentals) and then started with this book. But,do not just rely on the questions given after every chapter,exam questions are much more than those given at the end but, need to practice them too.Need to practice very much all simulation tests provided in few sites.I dont know about Barry Boone but,one test given on internet was good.So,need to practice on sample tests to know the type of questions and read every detail of this book.so to those planning to take java 1.1 exam you can go for this book.With this book also you can pass but if you take Barry and Boone tests it would be more helpful.About the authors they made up an excellent book.
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Summary: Good Book - but exam is much more
Review: I studied this book to complement my knowledge of java for java 1.1 exam. The objectives are served well and the book is nice to study. I particularly liked the discussion on Layouts and language fundamentals.... Though this book is good but the real exam covers more like reading from sockets, number conversion etc. Hope this helps!
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Summary: Java certification material
Review: If you are preparing for JCP examination, go for this book. The concepts are very clearly stated in an easily understandable language. It is worth buying !
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Summary: missing notes
Review: Some of the certification themes r missing like GridBagLayou
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Summary: Not the best of the lot
Review: The strategy I used to prepare for the SCJP exam was to useRoberts and Heller guide as a study guide. It has 142 samplequestions. I found it to be a very good guide having good representative questions. I used Boone's guide (Java 1.1 Certification Exam Guide) for its sample tests. It has two sample 70 question tests and 119 review questions. The strategy I used was to take several practice tests after studing the guide. Unfortunately, there are too many errors in Boone's book. Check the errata, but I still found it to be lacking. The wording of Boone's questions were sometimes ambiguous. I found the questions in Roberts and Heller to be much more precise. For sample tests, there are many available on the Web. I recommend the Roberts and Heller book, but I suggest checking the web for Mock tests rather than using Boone's Certification book. BTW, I passed the SCJP test on the first try.
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Summary: I like this book
Review: This book by simon roberts is a very fine book which helps even the beginners who are new to the language understand the concepts very clearly. I would even say that this is the best book for all those who want to take the JCP exam.Finally I would like to cong'late simon and philip for writing such a splendid book.
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