Java 2 Exam Guide, w. CD-ROM (Career++ Certification Series) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

The book's support site as mentioned in the book is... and the author(s) claim that errata is posted there. Fact: NO! The errata page is for an earlier book (Java 1.1 Certification Exam Guide) by the same author, NOT this book!

I read the back cover and seems appealing that it has a set of mock exam questions, hundreds of them. Fact: It is only an evaluation version of JCertify 2.0 which limits to 5 questions. What a great difference. This evaluation version is now worthless considering that you can freely download a more useful set JCertify 3.0 from the developer's site which consists of 30 questions (site is http://enterprisedeveloper.com/jcertify/download/index.html).

Another thing mentioned on the book cover is a sample course from Digital Think on the CD-ROM. Fact : IT IS NOT THERE !

Technical accuracy is poor... Very poor. I would not recommend this book to anyone contemplating studying for the certification exam. null, true, false are keywords to the authors. Anyone who reads the Java Language Specification would know that they are to be regarded as literals in the language and not keywords. I possess the book and I know that the errors mentioned by the other reviewers are real and there. The seriousness of the errors cannot be undermined. Such errors are simply unforgivable, considering that this is NOT the authors' first certification book. I wouldn't want anymore of the authors' books. It is important to get facts and definitions right. This book fails in this aspect.

Top notch books for JCP exam preparation would be the one from Sybex, "The Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide" and another book, "A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification". They are cheaper and much, much better.

Again, I would like to stress that the negative comments by other reviewers are very, very real. My advice is not to waste your money on this book !

But that's something I'm not going to risk after reading this book.

While there's thoughtful treatment of many Java issues, from the mundane to the esoteric, the presentation of these issues suffers from errors in both substance and typography.

Consider chapter 2, Java Programming Essentials. As you read through the chapter, you manage to ignore the various typos, after all, you already know Java, you're just trying to study for the exam. (It's just annoying to have to put up with them.)

You work through the exercises, and get philosophical as the authors ask you a question about a method that isn't even defined in the code sample they present. Are you supposed to use your imagination? I don't think that'd be a good idea on the actual exam.

Finally, you get to the end of the chapter to check your answers. Chapter 2 has exercises numbered 1 through 17. But the answers are numbered 1 through 19 ... and the answer for 17 doesn't have anything to do with the question for 17! You toss the book down in disgust.

That's unfortunately representative of much of the rest of the book. It seems pretty clear that the authors, the editors, and the publisher were rushing to get this text out. More's the pity, the book had real potential, with a lot of breadth. Maybe these problems will go away in a second or third edition ... but maybe Java 3 will be out then, too!

I bought this book hoping I could recommend it to my staff of programmers who I would like to see get their Java certification. Fat chance.

The publisher should recall this book and reprint it, otherwise what's the point!