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Sun Microsystems provides certification examinations for Solaris administrators and different types of Java programmers. Sun also offers training classes and practice exams for each type of certification.

Much of the material in this tutorial is pertinent to preparation for the examination to become a "Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform."

Some useful links are:

http://www.sun.com/training/certification

An overview of all of the various certifications offered and their associated learning tools.

http://www.sun.com/training/certification/java/index.html

Information specific to the certifications available for Java technologies.

http://www.sun.com/training/certification/objectives

A table of links to the "Testing Objectives" for each Java certification exam—lists of what will be covered on the exams.

If you open the last link and select the Testing Objectives for the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform, you will find a list of objectives that includes bulleted items in seven areas:

1. Declarations, Initialization, and Scoping
2. Flow Control
3. API Contents
4. Concurrency
5. OO Concepts
6. Collections/Generics
7. Fundamentals

In the text below, each of the bulleted items in each of the seven areas of the Testing Objectives for the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform is quoted, followed by links to sections in this tutorial that include relevant material.

Section 1: Declarations, Initialization and Scoping

Item 1:

"Develop code that declares classes (including abstract and all forms of nested classes), interfaces, and enums, and includes the appropriate use of package and import statements (including static imports).

• Declaring Classes
• Abstract Methods and Classes
• Nested Classes
• Interfaces
• Enum Types
• Creating and Using Packages
• Using Package Members (import statements, static imports)

Item 2:

"Develop code that declares an interface. Develop code that implements or extends one or more interfaces. Develop code that declares an abstract class. Develop code that extends an abstract class."

• Defining an Interface
• Implementing an Interface
• Abstract Methods and Classes

Item 3:

"Develop code that declares, initializes, and uses primitives, arrays, enums, and objects as static, instance, and local variables. Also, use legal identifiers for variable names."

• Primitive Data Types
• Arrays
• Enum Types
• Understanding Instance and Class Members
• Variables
• Declaring Member Variables

Item 4:

"Develop code that declares both static and non-static methods, and - if appropriate - use method names that adhere to the JavaBeans naming standards. Also develop code that declares and uses a variable-length argument list."

• Understanding Instance and Class Members
• Passing Information to a Method or Constructor

Item 5:

"Given a code example, determine if a method is correctly overriding or overloading another method, and identify legal return values (including covariant returns), for the method."

• Overriding and Hiding Methods
• Defining Methods (overloading)
• Returning a Value From a Method

Item 6:

"Given a set of classes and superclasses, develop constructors for one or more of the classes. Given a class declaration, determine if a default constructor will be created, and if so, determine the behavior of that constructor. Given a nested or non-nested class listing, write code to instantiate the class."

• Providing Constructors for Your Classes
• Using the Keyword super
• Creating Objects
• Nested Classes

Section 2: Flow Control

Item 1:

"Develop code that implements an if or switch statement; and identify legal argument types for these statements."

• The if-then and if-then-else Statements
• The switch statement

Item 2:

"Develop code that implements all forms of loops and iterators, including the use of for, the enhanced for loop (for-each), do, while, labels, break, and continue; and explain the values taken by loop counter variables during and after loop execution."

• The for Statement
• The while and do-while Statements
• Branching Statements

Item 3:

"Develop code that makes use of assertions, and distinguish appropriate from inappropriate use of assertions."

• Questions and Exercises:Classes (assertion example)

Item 4:

"Develop code that makes use of exceptions and exception handling clauses (try, catch, finally), and declares methods and overriding methods that throw exceptions."

• Catching and Handling Exceptions
• The try Block
• The catch Blocks
• The finally Block
• Putting It All Together

Item 5:

"Recognize the effect of an exception arising at a specified point in a code fragment. Note that the exception may be a runtime exception, a checked exception, or an error."

• The Catch or Specify Requirement
• Specifying the Exceptions Thrown by a Method

Item 6:

"Recognize situations that will result in any of the following being thrown: ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException, ClassCastException, IllegalArgumentException, IllegalStateException, NullPointerException, NumberFormatException, AssertionError, ExceptionInInitializerError, StackOverflowError or NoClassDefFoundError. Understand which of these are thrown by the virtual machine and recognize situations in which others should be thrown programatically."

• Putting It All Together (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException)
• How to Throw Exceptions (NullPointerException)
• Command-Line Arguments (NumberFormatException)
• Object Ordering (ClassCastException, IllegalStateException)
• The Queue Interface (IllegalStateException)
• The List Interface (IllegalStateException)

Section 3: API Contents

Item 1:

"Develop code that uses the primitive wrapper classes (such as Boolean, Character, Double, Integer, etc.), and/or autoboxing & unboxing. Discuss the differences between the String, StringBuilder, and StringBuffer classes."

• The Number Classes
• Characters
• Strings
• The StringBuilder Class

Item 2:

"Given a scenario involving navigating file systems, reading from files, or writing to files, develop the correct solution using the following classes (sometimes in combination), from java.io: BufferedReader, BufferedWriter, File, FileReader, FileWriter and PrintWriter."

• Character Streams (FileReader, FileWriter)
• Buffered Streams (BufferedReader, BufferedWriter)
• Formatting (PrintWriter)
• File Objects (File)

Item 3:

"Develop code that serializes and/or de-serializes objects using the following APIs from java.io: DataInputStream, DataOutputStream, FileInputStream, FileOutputStream, ObjectInputStream, ObjectOutputStream and Serializable."

• Data Streams
• Object Streams

Item 4:

"Use standard J2SE APIs in the java.text package to correctly format or parse dates, numbers, and currency values for a specific locale; and, given a scenario, determine the appropriate methods to use if you want to use the default locale or a specific locale. Describe the purpose and use of the java.util.Locale class."

Item 5:

"Write code that uses standard J2SE APIs in the java.util and java.util.regex packages to format or parse strings or streams. For strings, write code that uses the Pattern and Matcher classes and the String.split method. Recognize and use regular expression patterns for matching (limited to: . (dot), * (star), + (plus), ?, \d, \s, \w, [], ()). The use of *, +, and ? will be limited to greedy quantifiers, and the parenthesis operator will only be used as a grouping mechanism, not for capturing content during matching. For streams, write code using the Formatter and Scanner classes and the PrintWriter.format/printf methods. Recognize and use formatting parameters (limited to: %b, %c, %d, %f, %s) in format strings."

• Manipulating Characters in a String (String split method)
• Methods of the Pattern Class
• Methods of the Matcher Class
• Scanning
• Formatting
• Formatting (PrintWriter, formatting parameters)
• Formatting Numeric Print Output (formatting parameters)

Section 4: Concurrency

Item 1:

"Write code to define, instantiate, and start new threads using both java.lang.Thread and java.lang.Runnable."

• Defining and Starting a Thread
• The SimpleThreads Example

Item 2:

"Recognize the states in which a thread can exist, and identify ways in which a thread can transition from one state to another."

Item 3:

"Given a scenario, write code that makes appropriate use of object locking to protect static or instance variables from concurrent access problems."

• Thread Interference
• Memory Consistency Errors
• Synchronized Methods
• Intrinsic Locks and Synchronization
• Atomic Access

Item 4:

"Given a scenario, write code that makes appropriate use of wait, notify, or notifyAll."

• Guarded Blocks

Section 5: OO Concepts

Item 1:

"Develop code that implements tight encapsulation, loose coupling, and high cohesion in classes, and describe the benefits."

Item 2:

"Given a scenario, develop code that demonstrates the use of polymorphism. Further, determine when casting will be necessary and recognize compiler vs. runtime errors related to object reference casting."

• Inheritance

Item 3:

"Explain the effect of modifiers on inheritance with respect to constructors, instance or static variables, and instance or static methods."

• Inheritance
• Overriding and Hiding Methods
• Using the Keyword super

Item 4:

"Given a scenario, develop code that declares and/or invokes overridden or overloaded methods and code that declares and/or invokes superclass, overridden, or overloaded constructors."

• Overriding and Hiding Methods
• Defining Methods
• Using the Keyword super

Item 5:

"Develop code that implements "is-a" and/or "has-a" relationships."

Section 6: Collections / Generics

Item 1:

"Given a design scenario, determine which collection classes and/or interfaces should be used to properly implement that design, including the use of the Comparable interface."

• Object Ordering

Item 2:

"Distinguish between correct and incorrect overrides of corresponding hashCode and equals methods, and explain the difference between == and the equals method."

• Object as a Superclass

Item 3:

"Write code that uses the generic versions of the Collections API, in particular, the Set, List, and Map interfaces and implementation classes. Recognize the limitations of the non-generic Collections API and how to refactor code to use the generic versions."

• Generic Types

Item 4:

"Develop code that makes proper use of type parameters in class/interface declarations, instance variables, method arguments, and return types; and write generic methods or methods that make use of wildcard types and understand the similarities and differences between these two approaches."

• Declaring Classes
• Defining an Interface
• Passing Information to a Method or Constructor
• Returning a Value from a Method
• Generic Types
• Generic Methods and Constructors
• Wildcards

Item 5:

"Use capabilities in the java.util package to write code to manipulate a list by sorting, performing a binary search, or converting the list to an array. Use capabilities in the java.util package to write code to manipulate an array by sorting, performing a binary search, or converting the array to a list. Use the java.util.Comparator and java.lang.Comparable interfaces to affect the sorting of lists and arrays. Furthermore, recognize the effect of the "natural ordering" of primitive wrapper classes and java.lang.String on sorting."

• Algorithms

Section 7: Fundamentals

Item 1:

"Given a code example and a scenario, write code that uses the appropriate access modifiers, package declarations, and import statements to interact with (through access or inheritance) the code in the example."

• Controlling Access to Members of a Class
• Using Package Members

Item 2:

"Given an example of a class and a command-line, determine the expected runtime behavior."

• Command-Line Arguments
• Command-Line I/O Objects

Item 3:

"Determine the effect upon object references and primitive values when they are passed into methods that perform assignments or other modifying operations on the parameters."

• Passing information to a Method or Constructor

Item 4:

"Given a code example, recognize the point at which an object becomes eligible for garbage collection, and determine what is and is not guaranteed by the garbage collection system. Recognize the behaviors of System.gc and finalization."

• Using Objects

Item 5:

"Given the fully-qualified name of a class that is deployed inside and/or outside a JAR file, construct the appropriate directory structure for that class. Given a code example and a classpath, determine whether the classpath will allow the code to compile successfully."

• Managing Source and Class Files

Item 6:

"Write code that correctly applies the appropriate operators including assignment operators (limited to: =, +=, -=), arithmetic operators (limited to: +, -, *, /, %, ++, --), relational operators (limited to: <, <=, >, >=, ==, !=), the instanceof operator, logical operators (limited to: &, |, ^, !, &&, ||), and the conditional operator ( ? : ), to produce a desired result. Write code that determines the equality of two objects or two primitives.

• Assignment, Arithmetic, and Unary Operators
• Equality, Relational, and Conditional Operators
• Object as a Superclass
• Comparing Strings and Portions of Strings