How to prepare for CX310-056 exam.

The CX310-056 (Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5.0 Upgrade Exam) checks your real ability as a programmer. In fact, it is totally scenario-based, rather than knowledge-based. The prerequisite for the test is that you must have successfully completed the previous version of the Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform exam. This test requires you to have a good understanding of the Java language and the capability to write code for well-defined design applications. For this purpose, along with studying books and taking various practice tests, you should also practice well with Java. There will be less of “direct questions” and more questions will be of “find the output type”. Moreover, questions of the type “Drag-n-Drop” have been added. More questions will be based on new topics added to the language mainly generics, autoboxing/unboxing, covariant return, variable length arguments, static import, enums, and for-each loop. Although not many direct questions will be there in the test, practicing them will help clear your fundamentals. Practicing the following with Java will make you confident enough of scoring well in the test:

1. Write code that declares, constructs, and initializes arrays of any base type using any of the permitted forms, both for declaration and for initialization.
2. Write code using the if and switch statements.
3. Write code using all forms of loops including labeled and unlabeled, using break and continue statements, simple and enhanced for loop.
4. Write code that uses the java.util and java.regex packages and also the pattern and the matcher classes
5. Write code that makes proper use of exceptions and exception handling clauses (try, catch, finally).
6. Write code to invoke overridden or overloaded methods and parental or overloaded constructors.
7. Write code to define, instantiate, and start new threads using both java.lang.Thread and java.lang.Runnable.
8. Write code that makes use of generic collections with/without generics, and with/without wildcards and find the difference between these approaches.
9. Write code to explore the benefits and limitations of autoboxing/unboxing.
10. Use the for-each loop in your code. Make use of static import.
11. Write code using a Scanner and find the benefits and limitations of a Scanner.
12. Write code for searching and sorting algorithm using the java.lang.Comparable and java.lang.Comparator interfaces
13. Write code using serializable and explain the benefits and drawbacks of using serializable.
14. Write code that makes use of the capabilities of the java.io package for different file operations.