I sat the exam on Thursday morning at a prometric testing centre,
I found the exam to be quite simple. But due to the duration that I took developing the assignment, my memory of some pieces was a little flimsy and I will have to wait and see whether that has much bearing on the outcome.
My advice: try and do the assignment in contiguous blocks, it will assist your memory and try and sit the exam within two weeks of preparing your assignment. The exam will test the pros and cons of your choices, but the exam will not be particularly tailored to your solution and you may be surprised by what you are asked 3 of the 4 questions I had to answer were related to the design of the UI, where I expected more questions would be more around locking, OO principals, etc.
I got the feeling that the questions were really just to ascertain whether you designed and built the assignment. I expect it will take about 2 weeks to get a result.
SoapUI is a useful little tool for reading wsdl files, from a URL or as a file. It can then generate default request messages for each method allowing you to go through and tailor a set of test data. It has been developed in Java and builds requests and displays responses from the web service. I’ve got version 1.5 which is completely suitable for my current needs, though I notice they are up to version 2.5 and they have a professional release.
TCPMon was part of the Apache Axis1 project, but it is now an independent Apache project. The only available version is 1.0, released in March 2006! TCPMon is useful for debugging traffic between any TCP client and server. You set up a local port and point it to a server and port. TCPMon then shows you the communication. Very useful for any TCP based project, especially so for SOAP.
I’m just going through the process of creating and updating my CV for the UK market; I’ll be alive and kicking in London on the 17th of April with a Visa valid for work until March 2012.
I am expecting the market will be difficult; based on the news provided by the BBC and reports from friends in London and the United Kingdom. But I am excited about getting to London and looking for work as a software developer.
I would quite like to get my teeth into a role where I can implement a lot of the areas I have been working on recently and form aspects I consider ideal in a web application solution; specifically:
- xhtml web pages should be easy to parse, quick to load and forward compatible with future developments in html standards.
- unobtrusive javascript because the tools that you choose should embrace users, not restrict them.
- microformats to simplify post-processing of content
- SOAP/ RESTful webservices to provide opportunities for developers and organisations to extend application functionality.
- Java (or PHP, or C) because that’s what I do!
- Subversion makes sense and is easy to use, like CVS…
- Linux, though I usually get Windows at work, I’d like to work on OSX, BSD or Linux instead; it is what we used at Uni.
Really I’m not particularly picky about projects I pick up; as my CV shows, I have taken on a diverse range of projects and change is good.
I have just uploaded my Java 2 developer certification project and now purchasing my developer certification essay. Hopefully I will have Java developer certification by the time I am looking for work in London.
I have also uploaded my “CV” with 1st contact. They recommend using their online tool; which was quite painful, so I ended up only entering some of my work experience. I’d probably just upload my offline CV given hindsight. They say don’t share your CV around with anyone else and so did the next website I went to, so I decided I’d stay faithful to 1st contact and wait till I got to the UK to spread the love.
