Christmas present from Sun

Just as the year was ended I got a great Christmas present from Sun Microsystems.

1) A cool NetBeans 10 year anniversary T-shirt for participating in the community acceptance test programme for NetBeans 6.5 (NetCAT)



2) A pass on my exam to become Sun Certified Specialist for NetBeans IDE

The exam was special to me as it was my first ever certification exam. My score was 82%, with the least score in questions about building Java SE applications. I guess it shows that I've never build Java SE applications on NetBeans. Otherwise I think the exam was great. Studying for the exam revealed a lot of useful features that I had never used before, but now wondering how I could ever live without. I can highly recommend doing the exam!

Thanks Sun!

Ordered the certification books

I've finally ordered the certification books that I mentioned in a previous post (SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055): Study Guide Exam 310-055 and Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java EE Study Guide (Exam 310-051): Study Guide Exam 310-051).

It is my personal goal to have taken both certifications before the end of April. I was tempted to also get the Certification Press book about Sun Certified Business Components Developer, but it got such bad reviews on Amazon that I didn't dare to get it. Unfortunately it seem to be the only study guide for Business Components Development.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the books getting here so that I can get started!

Considering Java certification

As one of my new year resolutions I promised myself that I'd get some sort of technical certification this year. Basically what I'm interested in is the Java Programmer Certification, Web Component Developer Certification and Enterprise Architect Certification. For the three certifications I've found the following prep literature:

• SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055): Study Guide Exam 310-055 (Certification Press) - Link
  

• Sun Certified Web Component Developer Study Guide (Exam 310-081) - Link
  

• Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java EE Study Guide (Exam 310-051): Study Guide Exam 310-051 (Certification Press) - Link
  

On the project management side I'm considering the Scrum Master Certification or Prince 2 Certification.

Any recommendation?