WEBSPHERE: Exam-a-rama

Futher to my warblings about passing Websphere certifications, I managed to pass exam 285 this morning.

This makes me, ahem, an IBM Certified Associate Developer - WebSphere Studio, V5.0. Furthermore; the lady at the testing centre told me that, "From now on Mr Spence, everywhere you go the kids will wanna rock." Who would have thought?

So how did you prepare Richard?
Well I bought this book: An Introduction to Web Application Development with IBM Websphere Studio . It comes with a time limited copy of Websphere Express and Websphere Studio.

I read the book, went through the exercises and did the end of chapter tests. You'll need a meaty machine as Websphere is a big old girl (1 gig of RAM, decent processor). You will also need to read the README on the cd carefully as you need to install some extras that are not in the book's install guide.

Finally, I did the $10 on-line practice exam the day before the exam and passed. Doing the practice exam really helped as there is quite a bit on the exam that is not in the book (although in the objectives) the practice made me aware of this.

The pass mark required was 53% <coughs>

So what did you learn smartypants?
Passing the exam has got me up to speed with Websphere studio and filled a few gaps in my J2EE knowledge. I tend to run screaming from most large IDEs, so this is no mean feat. I liked the book as it was not just a the usual "click on the file menu" trudge through the features non-book. It was well thought out and dealt with real word J2EE issues like, mapping, controller servlets, formbeans action patterns and data access brokers. I'd reccomend it.

So how much did it all cost monkey-programmer-boy?
The book 34 pounds, the exam about 55 pounds, the practice exam 7 pounds and the taxi back from Twickenham was 8 quid. So around a £100.

So what now?
I am going to re-write my firm's creaking enterprise Domino app in Websphere. Why? Beacause it's there and for England, dammit.