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Exam Objectives
Section 1:
Declarations, Initialization and Scoping
- Develop code that declares classes (including
abstract and all forms of nested classes),
interfaces, and enums, and includes the
appropriate use of package and import statements
(including static imports).
- Develop code that declares an interface.
Develop code that implements or extends one or
more interfaces. Develop code that declares an
abstract class. Develop code that extends an
abstract class.
- Develop code that declares, initializes, and
uses primitives, arrays, enums, and objects as
static, instance, and local variables. Also, use
legal identifiers for variable names.
- Develop code that declares both static and
non-static methods, and - if appropriate - use
method names that adhere to the JavaBeans naming
standards. Also develop code that declares and
uses a variable-length argument list.
- Given a code example, determine if a method is
correctly overriding or overloading another
method, and identify legal return values
(including covariant returns), for the method.
- Given a set of classes and superclasses,
develop constructors for one or more of the
classes. Given a class declaration, determine if
a default constructor will be created, and if
so, determine the behavior of that constructor.
Given a nested or non-nested class listing,
write code to instantiate the class.
Section 2: Flow Control
- Develop code that implements an if or switch
statement; and identify legal argument types for
these statements.
- Develop code that implements all forms of
loops and iterators, including the use of for,
the enhanced for loop (for-each), do, while,
labels, break, and continue; and explain the
values taken by loop counter variables during
and after loop execution.
- Develop code that makes use of assertions, and
distinguish appropriate from inappropriate uses
of assertions.
- Develop code that makes use of exceptions and
exception handling clauses (try, catch,
finally), and declares methods and overriding
methods that throw exceptions.
- Recognize the effect of an exception arising
at a specified point in a code fragment. Note
that the exception may be a runtime exception, a
checked exception, or an error.
- Recognize situations that will result in any
of the following being thrown:
ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException,ClassCastException,
IllegalArgumentException, IllegalStateException,
NullPointerException, NumberFormatException,
AssertionError, ExceptionInInitializerError,
StackOverflowError or NoClassDefFoundError.
Understand which of these are thrown by the
virtual machine and recognize situations in
which others should be thrown programmatically.
Section 3: API Contents
- Develop code that uses the primitive wrapper
classes (such as Boolean, Character, Double,
Integer, etc.), and/or autoboxing & unboxing.
Discuss the differences between the String,
StringBuilder, and StringBuffer classes.
- Given a scenario involving navigating file
systems, reading from files, or writing to
files, develop the correct solution using the
following classes (sometimes in combination),
from java.io: BufferedReader,BufferedWriter,
File, FileReader, FileWriter and PrintWriter.
- Develop code that serializes and/or
de-serializes objects using the following APIs
from java.io: DataInputStream, DataOutputStream,
FileInputStream, FileOutputStream,
ObjectInputStream, ObjectOutputStream and
Serializable.
- Use standard J2SE APIs in the java.text
package to correctly format or parse dates,
numbers, and currency values for a specific
locale; and, given a scenario, determine the
appropriate methods to use if you want to use
the default locale or a specific locale.
Describe the purpose and use of the
java.util.Locale class.
- Write code that uses standard J2SE APIs in the
java.util and java.util.regex packages to format
or parse strings or streams. For strings, write
code that uses the Pattern and Matcher classes
and the String.split method. Recognize and use
regular expression patterns for matching
(limited to: . (dot), - (star), + (plus), ?, \d,
\s, \w, [], ()). The use of -, +, and ? will be
limited to greedy quantifiers, and the
parenthesis operator will only be used as a
grouping mechanism, not for capturing content
during matching. For streams, write code using
the Formatter and Scanner classes and the
PrintWriter.format/printf methods. Recognize and
use formatting parameters (limited to: %b, %c,
%d, %f, %s) in format strings.
Section 4: Concurrency
- Write code to define, instantiate, and start
new threads using both java.lang.Thread and
java.lang.Runnable.
- Recognize the states in which a thread can
exist, and identify ways in which a thread can
transition from one state to another.
- Given a scenario, write code that makes
appropriate use of object locking to protect
static or instance variables from concurrent
access problems.
- Given a scenario, write code that makes
appropriate use of wait, notify, or notifyAll.
Section 5: OO Concepts
- Develop code that implements tight
encapsulation, loose coupling, and high cohesion
in classes, and describe the benefits.
- Given a scenario, develop code that
demonstrates the use of polymorphism. Further,
determine when casting will be necessary and
recognize compiler vs. runtime errors related to
object reference casting.
- Explain the effect of modifiers on inheritance
with respect to constructors, instance or static
variables, and instance or static methods.
- Given a scenario, develop code that declares
and/or invokes overridden or overloaded methods
and code that declares and/or invokes superclass,
overridden, or overloaded constructors.
- Develop code that implements "is-a" and/or
"has-a" relationships.
Section 6: Collections
/ Generics
- Given a design scenario, determine which
collection classes and/or interfaces should be
used to properly implement that design,
including the use of the Comparable interface.
- Distinguish between correct and incorrect
overrides of corresponding hashCode and equals
methods, and explain the difference between ==
and the equals method.
- Write code that uses the generic versions of
the Collections API, in particular, the Set,
List, and Map interfaces and implementation
classes. Recognize the limitations of the
non-generic Collections API and how to refactor
code to use the generic versions.
- Develop code that makes proper use of type
parameters in class/interface declarations,
instance variables, method arguments, and return
types; and write generic methods or methods that
make use of wildcard types and understand the
similarities and differences between these two
approaches.
- Use capabilities in the java.util package to
write code to manipulate a list by sorting,
performing a binary search, or converting the
list to an array. Use capabilities in the
java.util package to write code to manipulate an
array by sorting, performing a binary search, or
converting the array to a list. Use the
java.util.Comparator and java.lang.Comparable
interfaces to affect the sorting of lists and
arrays. Furthermore, recognize the effect of the
"natural ordering" of primitive wrapper classes
and java.lang.String on sorting.
Section 7: Fundamentals
- Given a code example and a scenario, write
code that uses the appropriate access modifiers,
package declarations, and import statements to
interact with (through access or inheritance)
the code in the example.
- Given an example of a class and a
command-line, determine the expected runtime
behavior.
- Determine the effect upon object references
and primitive values when they are passed into
methods that perform assignments or other
modifying operations on the parameters.
- Given a code example, recognize the point at
which an object becomes eligible for garbage
collection, and determine what is and is not
guaranteed by the garbage collection system.
Recognize the behaviors of System.gc and
finalization.
- Given the fully-qualified name of a class that
is deployed inside and/or outside a JAR file,
construct the appropriate directory structure
for that class. Given a code example and a
classpath, determine whether the classpath will
allow the code to compile successfully.
- Write code that correctly applies the
appropriate operators including assignment
operators (limited to: =, +=, -=), arithmetic
operators (limited to: +, -, -, /, %, ++, --),
relational operators (limited to: <, <=, >, >=,
==, !=), the instanceof operator, logical
operators (limited to: &, |, ^, !, &&, ||), and
the conditional operator ( ? : ), to produce a
desired result. Write code that determines the
equality of two objects or two primitives. |
