As some of you know I am preparing to take the Zend PHP 5 certification exam in the near future (exact date not set), and have opted to actually study the material instead of just winging it, probably a good idea. I thought I might be able to provide some tips for anyone considering taking the exam in the future.
My first advice it to purchase the Practice tests, which are offered by Zend, and given by php|architect. I was originally just going to study for the exam from the multitude of books I currently own, but 10 tests for $22 USD, I figured WTF.
So far I have taken ( and passed:) ) 4 practice tests. What is most impressive is at the end of the exam, you get a break down of how you did on each section and what your final score would be if this were the real exam. Such as:
For each section (and the final grade) it is possible to receive: fail, pass, or excellent. I believe ‘fail’ and ‘excellent’ are fairly self explanatory. Pass means that you are within a narrow margin of the passing score and may want to refresh your knowledge of the material. As you can see, I need to do some studying on ’streams and network programming’. Which is why you may have seen my request for a good tutorial about sockets, on twitter.
Another nice thing about the practice test is that you gives you a feel for the type of questions the exam will ask. I don’t want to say they are trick questions, but you really need to read the question and carefully review the code provided, because it is not always as simple as it seems. Let’s just say, if you saw the code in your everyday project you would be scratching your head wondering why the coder made the function so complicated, when it could be written so much more simply.
There is also a study guide published by php|architect. The study guide provides a nice overview of all the topics, divided into chapters corresponding to the sections of the exam. It should not be seen as a comprehensive resource of all the material on the exam, but is intended to provide a synopsis of the material and is sold as such.
You can purchase the study guide, practice tests, and an exam voucher in one bundle on zend.com, if you decide the study guide would be a benefit to you.
If you have already taken the exam, please comment and let everyone what the real exam is like.
PDF
