Tag Archives: certification

spring 3 certification – readings and resources

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Table of contents for the Spring 3 certification series of posts:

  1. Jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences (Background information)
  2. About the test (includes Scope of the test and Spring 2.5 vs 3.0 exam)
  3. What did I read and how were the resources I tried
  4. My study plan
  5. Skills guru mock exam
  6. What I would recommend as a study plan

I tried some other exams that didn’t claim to be mocks. See the week by week section for those. Or for more details about the resources in this table.

Resource Spring Version Cost Comments
The official student guide and lab manual from course 3.0 came with course I think studying this would have been enough to pass (with a low passing score.)
Spring in Action (3rd edition) 3.0 $30/$50 The parts of the book that are already written were enjoyable to read. I learned a lot from them although not necessarily things that were on the test. Some test material was reinforced well though.
Sections from Official Reference Documentation 3.0 $0 Again interesting and I learned a lot, but definitely overkill for the test.
Spring Source’s Sample questions 2.5 $0 I thought these questions were too easy when I first read them. Now I think the level is equivalent to the exam. Even though they are 2.5, the content still applies. They are not multiple choice though.
Gavin Lasnitzki’s study notes 2.5 $0 These are a lot more detailed than the exam. They are faster to read than the official documentation so good for a review.
Skill-guru mock exam #1 3.0 $0.99 It’s the best we have, but keep in mind it is a lot harder than the real exam and contains material that is out of scope. See Skills Guru section for more detail.
Skill-guru mock exam #2 3.0 $0.99 See comments for exam #1. I felt more questions were out of scope in this exam.
BlackBeltFactory’s mock exam 3.0 contribution point based I led the creation of this exam as I was studying. It is significantly harder than the real exam. At the time of this blog post, it is in public beta state. Now released.
Jeanne Boyarsky’s study notes 3.0 $0 I wrote them so I’m biased.

I’ve also read some other Spring books in the past for older versions of Spring.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of “Spring in Action” exchange for writing a review of the book when it prints. I am also a volunteer administrator at BlackBeltFactory from when I was active in the early days. This means I have thousands of contribution points and didn’t have to think about the cost when taking exams.

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Next page: My study plan

spring 3 certification – skills-guru exam review

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Table of contents for the Spring 3 certification series of posts:

  1. Jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences (Background information)
  2. About the test (includes Scope of the test and Spring 2.5 vs 3.0 exam)
  3. What did I read and how were the resources I tried
  4. My study plan
  5. Skills guru mock exam
  6. What I would recommend as a study plan

Since SpringSource refuses to provide a mock exam or even a few questions, the Skills-Guru tests are the best simulation we have of the environment. As such, they warrant their own section. General notes:

  • While you can retake the exam as many times as you want for free, you can only see the questions you got wrong after completing the test.
  • The mock did correlate with with the amount of time I needed per question. So if you think 90 minutes isn’t much for 50 questions, this is a good way to get used to it. Similarly to the SCEA, I had all the time in the world.
  • They don’t give you percentages by area. I copied all the questions to Word and sub-totaled myself. As tedious as this was, it was useful. Good to know the weaker areas although tedious to put this together. (I wish they gave it automatically.) A LOT of the questions I got wrong were not covered in the class or course materials. This implies the mock creator might not have seen the course materials. Regardless the mock contains many things not on the exam.

Number of questions in each category so you can figure out your subtotal percentages. Ones with stars are categories that don’t appear on the real exam at all.

I also wonder if the same person wrote both tests. The style was different, the difficulty was different, the category names were different and exam #2 had a lot more out of scope content. In any case, comparing the distribution to the real exam, you’ll notice some differences.

Exam 1:

  • Container/Test (14)
  • AOP (6)
  • JDBC (3)
  • Transactions (6)
  • Web/MVC (8)
  • Remoting (6)
  • JMS (3)
  • JMX (3)
  • *SP-EL (1)

Exam 2:

  • Container/Test (13)
  • AOP (6)
  • Database(6)
  • Transactions(2)
  • Web/MVC (5)
  • Remoting (3)
  • JMS (2)
  • JMX (2)
  • *XML(1)
  • *Email (1)
  • *EJB(1)
  • *Resources(1)
  • *Type Conversion(1)
  • *Dynamic Languages(1)
  • *SpEL(1)
  • *JCA(1)
  • *General(1)
  • + 2 others that I failed to record

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Next page: What I would recommend as a study plan

spring 3 certification – recommended study plan

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17

Table of contents for the Spring 3 certification series of posts:

  1. Jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences (Background information)
  2. About the test (includes Scope of the test and Spring 2.5 vs 3.0 exam)
  3. What did I read and how were the resources I tried
  4. My study plan
  5. Skills guru mock exam
  6. What I would recommend as a study plan
  1. Make sure you understand everything in the course student guide
  2. Look at my study notes (or equivalent if someone else puts up Spring 3 study notes) and make sure everything looks familiar. You don’t have to be able to recite the syntax from memory.
  3. Take the second skill guru exam. (I found the first exam to be a better indicator of readiness with less out of scope content and would have preferred to take it later.) If you pass, skip to step #7. If not you may still pass the real exam, but it is probably better to study more.
  4. Look at the Spring 2.5 exam sample questions to get a feel for the level of difficulty to expect. (Yes, it really was this easy.) Questions harder than this in the skills guru exam shouldn’t cause you to worry.
  5. Do any labs you didn’t cover in class for areas you feel week.
  6. Skim the official reference – only focusing on the sections covered in the class student guide.
  7. Take the BlackBeltFactory exam if you feel you need more practice. If you fail some of the sections, don’t worry – this is harder than the real exam. You want to make sure you know the container/AOP sections cold. The level of difficulty is closer here and it is the lions share of the exam.
  8. Take the first skill guru exam. If you pass, you will definitely pass the real exam. If you don’t pass, pay attention to why. Even on this exam, some questions are out of scope and many are harder than on the real exam.
  9. Good luck!

Previous page: Skills guru mock exam