OCP Book Now Available!

OCP: Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 8 Programmer II Study Guide: Exam 1Z1-809

Jeanne and I are thrilled to announce that the Kindle version of our second book, OCP: Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 8 Programmer II Study Guide: Exam 1Z0-809, is now available for purchase on Amazon! The OCP paperback edition, available for pre-order, is currently printing and will be shipping in the next month.

This book, which is nearly twice the size of our previous OCA Study Guide, is chock full of information on topics ranging from design patterns, to concurrency and NIO.2, to JDBC. Unlike many other older study guides, we have written our material centered entirely around Java 8, with an emphasis on lambda expressions and streams.

While some experienced developers can pass Oracle’s OCA exam with limited amount of studying, the same cannot be said for the OCP exam. Besides the large-scale inclusion of lambda expressions and streams, the exam covers includes much broader topics that seasoned developers may not be readily familiar with.

For example, you might have been using JDBC for years, but can you list the differences between obtaining a connection using the 3.0 and 4.0 versions of the drivers? You may have also been reading and writing files with java.io streams for years, but we bet many of you haven’t ever used the mark(), reset(), or skip() methods. It is for reasons like these that we strongly recommend you study carefully for the exam using our book or an equivalent study guide, avoiding the pitfalls (mentally and financially) of having to pay to take the exam multiple times.

Our book covers all 3 variations of the OCP exam, including a dedicated Appendix for those taking the Java 6 or earlier version of the OCP 8 upgrade exam, as it contains material not found in the other two versions of the exams.

We hope you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed writing it!

OCA 8 Book: Online Material and Practice Exams

practice-test If you’re one of the individuals who already purchased our OCA 8 Study Guide, first we wanted to say thank you very much for your support. Jeanne and I both worked for a long time on the book and we really hope you enjoy it! Next, the Study Guide makes reference to online material available to purchasers of the book including an online glossary, flashcards, and three Practice Exams. It also includes online versions of the Assessment and Review questions found in the text of the book.

Jeanne and I wanted to let everyone know that the publisher is working on making that online material available right away, with an estimated release date of 1/25/15, less than two weeks from now. Of course, we will let you know if we hear anything sooner, but for now just sit tight, the material is being finalized.

UPDATE 1/23/2015: The online study material including practice exams has now been posted online! See this post for information.

Announcing the OCA: Oracle Certified Associate Java SE 8 Programmer I Study Guide

Jeanne and I are pleased to announce the upcoming release of our Oracle Certified Associate Java 8 Study Guide for the Java SE 8 Oracle Programmer I exam! We have been working with Wiley Publishing for the past year to bring this book to light, and are thrilled to announce it is nearing completion. Our goal was create a book that is engaging and fun for new and veteran developers alike. The book covers all of the new features that you are required to know for the OCA 8 exam including: the Local Date/Time API, the Period class, lambda expressions, and more. And of course, it covers the “old” topics as well.

scott-and-jeanne
The book, to be tentatively titled OCA: Oracle Certified Associate Java SE 8 Programmer I Study Guide: Exam 1Z1-808, will be available for purchase later this year on Amazon.com and wherever books are sold.

Oracle has already published a beta version of the Java SE 8 Programmer I exam, with the official version to be available in the coming months.

Please visit our new OCA: Oracle Certified Associate Java SE 8 Programmer I Study Guide page for the latest information about the book. If you have any questions for us, feel free to post in the OCA forum at CodeRanch, which Jeanne and Scott visit frequently.