Know about SCWCD5 ; by Bryan Basham in javaranch

its a Bryan Basham(one of the authors of Head First Servlets&JSP) meassage to those who are giving SCWCD5

I have been reading a few posts that have mentioned the new SCWCD5 exam and I thought that I would give you my perspective. I feel qualified to do this because I was the one contracted by Sun to create this update.First of all, the title of the exam is pure marketing fluff. The SCWCD5 exam has nothing to do with Java EE v1.5. This exam (CX-310-083) is merely an update of the old SCWCD exam (CX-310-081). No objectives were changed. The new exam is solely based upon the J2EE v1.4 version of the serlvet (2.4) and JSP (2.0) and JSTL (1.1) specs. This decision was made almost two years ago when I was leaving Sun. My vote in that decision was based upon the fact that the changes in the relevant specs were very minor (as Mr. Lyons has mentioned). In fact, at the time I told Sun that it didn't make sense to create a new exam. Six months ago, Sun contracted me to do a update of the exam to replace items that were not performing well. More on that in a minute.[BTW, the biggest change in the web technologies for Java EE v5 was the introduction of JavaServer Faces (JSF). At the time of the decision, I felt that JSF was (a) not mature enough to be included and (b) big enough that it might need its own cert exam. For SCWCD6 (for Java EE v6) I have recently recommended to Sun that they consider a major rewrite of the objectives to add objectives for JSF and remove objectives that JSF essential makes irrelevant. However, this is not a done deal by any means and I now have very little sway within Sun.]The update itself included creating nearly 140 items (spread over several forms). So the new (updated) SCWCD5 exam is a mixture of old items and new items. One ranch hand asked if the new exam items are harder than the old exam. Sun asked me to make the new exam more "performance based" rather than "knowledge based". An example of knowledge based would be something like: