Spring Certification : Feed back

[hikage]

As I pass the certification Spring, I give you a feedback of my preparation and of the exam.

I work all days with Spring at myjob, but also in my free time. I am Spring Leader on a French portal and I currently work on a contribution for Spring WS.

To prepare the certification, I followed the Core Spring training, to refresh my memory about the various topics under consideration.
I quickly read the official documentation one day before the exam, too.

The exam was more difficult than I though.

However most questions remain in a correct level that all good Spring users can answer. Other targets details that we find easily in the documentation or Javadoc, but that we do not know necessarily in head.

I passed the exam with 82% in about 50 minutes.


Hope this helps

[lshimokawa]

Thanks for your feedback, I will be taking the exam on December 15th, I'll post my feedback, too.

[posta07]

Any other feedback on the certification exam? These comments are very useful!

[Shinsendomi]

I have also passed the certification exam with 78% score.

For my experience re-reading the class transcript was the key for me

I have to say that since I took the spring 2.5 exam it was good to get more recent information about let's say annotation-based configuration which is not necessarily covered in the spring in action book.

My only question now is wether or not I'm suppose to receive feedback from springsource e.g. Any official recognition of the passing of the certification will be helpful. All I got was a photocopy if my result from the testing center.
Am I supposed to wait for some sort of diploma that I can frame or even an email from springsource ?

Thanks for any information back about that last matter

[leozin]

hi, I took the exam last year, but I did not talk with nobody about the test, because almost all my IT friends don't know the SFC test exam

Well, I got 58% and I will try again in the next few weeks. I thought that was a hard test, some areas, mainly in Spring Web Services and JMX, I have no experience in these topics. Unfortunately, when I've finished my test, my test result did not print and I don't know which areas I went better or worst, I just do some considerations about where I had no idea about topic (like JMX and Web Services).

well, please wish me lucky, I won't go to carnaval (where in Brazil lol) just to stay studying Spring. By the way, I've stopped to work with Java and I'm working, actually, with Ruby/On Rails and Adobe Flex, so, it's a good idea do keep studying to spring certification because it makes my java's knowledge "refreshed"

[posta07]

thank you for the feedback! i'm taking the exam this friday, and your guys' feedback has helped me!

[posta07]

For those of you that have taken the test, are they anything like the Spring tests over at javablackbelt.com?

[Shinsendomi]

For those of you that have taken the test, are they anything like the Spring tests over at javablackbelt.com?

for my experience, javablackblets spring exam are a little bit rougher...
I mean most of the questions I had to answer when I tried there, were about code syntax error, very special cases, spelling errors and a little bit of semantics .. In a way I had the feeling that I had to be a java compiler to answer the questions correctly .. which is good in a way but very different from the springsource exam as you can see from the sample questions on the springsource website.

hope this helps.

[kwleung88]

I would like to ask is attending the core Spring training a prerequisite to take the exam?

Thanks.

[posta07]

I would require it before taking the exam for certification. thanks.

In my opinion, if you're dedicated enough, the class is not necessary. I read through the entire spring reference manual paying strict attention to the subjects on the course's syllabus. The important part is to fire up an IDE and try out some of the things presented in the reference manual.

In other words, if you're willing to spend the time yourself, and stick with it, spending the $2500+ for class is truly optional.