Product Description

An integrated study system based on proven instructional methodology, this book and CD package shows you not only what--but how--to study for the SCWCD exam. The book offers complete coverage of all official exam objectives, 190+ practice exam questions, step-by-step exercises, on-the-job elements, and chapter self-tests. The CD-ROM contains MasterExam software with a complete 69-question exam, a searchable electronic book, 45+ complete web applications with source, and access to a downloadable bonus exam (with free online registration).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #505290 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 864 pages

From the Back Cover

Get the book that shows you not only what--but how--to study

• 100% complete coverage of all official objectives for exams 310-081 and 310-082
• Exam Readiness checklist at the front of the book--you’re ready for the exams when all objectives on the list are checked off
• Real-world exercises--Step-by-step instruction modeled after the hands-on exam questions
• Inside the Exam sections highlight key exam topics covered
• 45+ complete web applications, with source code illustrate the official objectives
• Simulated exam questions match the format, tone, topics, and difficulty of the real exams

Covers all exam 310-081 and 310-082 topics, including: The Servlet Model * Web Applications * The Web Container Model * Sessions and Listeners * Security * Java Server Pages * JSP Standard Actions, XML, and EL * JSP Tag Libraries * Custom Tags * J2EE Patterns

The best fully integrated study system available. CD-ROM includes:

• Complete MasterExam practice testing engine, featuring:
• One full practice exam
• Detailed answers with explanations
• Score Report performance assessment tool
• Electronic book for studying on the go
• Bonus downloadable MasterExam practice test with free online registration

About the Author
David Bridgewater a Java consultant and trainer, teaches Java and WebSphere technologies for IBM. He has written extensively on Java topics for industry magazines, and is a regular contributor to javaranch.com.

Customer Reviews

Reasonably good
I got this book partially because I prefer more of a textbook format than the Head First books. This book's format was more straightforward, so I got it along with the Head First Servlets and JSP. However, I have found a lot of errors, inconsistencies and confusing explanations in this book. Some of the errors are minor, but others really cause fundamental confusion. I'm searching for an errata for the book now. (There may not be one -- I'm not finding it yet.)

Although the Head First books have a comic, cartoonish quality that I don't generally care for, I must say that their editing is better, their explanations are always understandable, and I find myself going to that book to clear up my confusion with this one.

That being said, there is a lot of very good information in this book and some of the explanations and examples are pretty good. You might consider getting both books because they both cover the material in different ways.

I was tempted to give the book four stars, but I've just hit another few errors that are really irritating. (The author is trying to explain the difference between the forward() and include() functions for handling servlet requests. But his code examples mistakenly are showing forward() where apparently he meant to type include(). These examples do not match the explanation at all. See pages 183 and 184.)

Another egregious error: In the Head First Servlets & JSP book, they make a point of saying "You need to recognize WRONG method names like: getPrintWriter(), getResponseStream(), [...]" etc. And there's a big X in a circle on top of these names. Look at the SCWCD book by D. Bridgewater on page 179. Guess what method he uses inside the code example -- getPrintWriter() !!! (Gee, and I was wondering why my code would not compile.) In that SAME code sample, you can see him getting a PrintWriter object and calling the "write" method on it. I was perplexed by this because I saw them using the "println" method in the same situation in the Head First book. Well, apparently there is a difference, even though the code does work. Sierra and Bates in Head First make a point of saying you should use "println" with a PrintWriter and a "write" with a ServletOutputStream. They explain why, of course. I don't know about you, but these sorts of errors are confusing. I'm not even mentioning the multitudes of small typos throughout the book, like: java.servlet.forward.path_info. (servlet is in the javax package, not java.)

In any case, the book might be worth getting, and if you are able to find an errata it would make the book much more usable. If you do not find an errata that covers all of these errors (I've only mentioned a few), then be sure to get some other resource to check this one against so you can understand parts that are erroneous or confusing.

A lot of errors
I would not recommend this book even though it covers all of exam objectives and has a lot of examples and exercises. The reason is that there are a lot of errors that make this book hard to read. It is very irritating, annoying and time consuming.
Here are just some of errors I found in the book.
1. Answer to question 13 on page 88: "...HttpServletRequest.getHeaders() returns all request header names..." It is not correct because the method that returns all request header names is getHeaderNames(). There is no getHeaders() method (with no arguments) in HttpServletRequest class.
2. Page 82 question 19. Author mistakenly took the code from question 8 so the question 19 and answer to it on page 90 are completely irrelevant.
3. On page 559 author says that the type for 'items' attribute is java.lang.Array. There is no such class in Java!
4. Page 637 answer to question 8: "...J to 14 (c:forEach, again)". If you look at question's code on page 625 you can see that correct answer should be: J maps to 'body'.

Number of errors, big and small, is very high in this book. This is the case of unprofessional work both on the part of author & editor.

Needs better technical editing, or at least an online errata guide
After I finished the first chapter self-test, and saw that there were two obvious errors in the answer key (questions 7 and 19), I considered buying another book. I searched for an errata listing for the book online, with no success. I emailed the author and techical editor. To his credit, David Bridgewater replied promptly, but was not much help: he suggested that the publisher probably has it on their website (as of when I emailed him, they did not); and he also sent me corrections to two places in the book, but there are a lot more just two errors in the book.

The technical editor did not reply to my email. This comes as no surprise; perhaps she is embarrased at the poor job she did editing this book. She obviously did not give thorough consideration to the self-tests.

I decided that I did not want to spend the time or money to get a different exam guide, and that 99% of the book was most likely accurate, and the errata are probably easy to spot (even if they are really annoying), so I trudged on.

I regret that decision. I am now at the end of chapter 4, and have spotted a total of five major errors in the self-tests, and at least a dozen minor errors in the self-tests and the text of the chapters. Also annoying is the ambiguous wording in some of the self-test questions; some of the phrases used are open to interpretation, and should be worded to be less ambiguous.

Without knowing how good or bad other SCWCD exam guides are, I'd feel pretty confident in recommending that you should probably go with a different study guide that this one.