This fact-based approach highlights material that will be on the test. This means that it pays special attention to certain topics (for example, public-, protected-, and private-access rules), even though you may not normally need to think at this level of detail. Besides the basics, the text explains the details of class design and string processing particularly well. Exception handling and garbage collection in Java is also discussed, as well as class design as it pertains to the certification test. The book includes plenty of tricks and tips for what's covered on the test, along with what to watch out for in certain areas.
A longer chapter on AWT for building basic user interfaces in Java rounds out this text. Every section provides challenging sample questions (usually about 20 for each chapter), which let you test your knowledge. An appendix contains more than 100 pages of answers and explanations for these self-test questions. (The companion CD-ROM features a computer-based test, similar in format to the actual certification exam.) If you have some Java experience, this book will quickly help ready you for official Java certification. Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Study Guide definitely delivers the goods. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered:
- Test-preparation guide to the Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 exam 310-025
- The format of the certification test
- Java language basics
- Data types, arrays, and strings
- Declarations and access control
- Operators
- Equality testing
- Flow control
- Exception handling (try, catch, and finally blocks)
- Checked and unchecked exceptions
- Java garbage collection
- Mark-sweep algorithms
- Encapsulation and class design in Java
- Overloading and overriding methods
- Inner classes
- Threads and synchronization techniques
- Math, String, and StringBuffer classes
- Java collections
- The AWT user interface classes
- Event handling (events, sources, and listeners)
- Sample test questions and answers