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:
- Write code that declares, constructs, and initializes arrays of any base type using any of the permitted forms, both for declaration and for initialization.
- Write code using the if and switch statements.
- Write code using all forms of loops including labeled and unlabeled, using break and continue statements, simple and enhanced for loop.
