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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:
 | List of exceptions:
 | ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException |
 | ClassCastException |
 | IllegalArgumentException |
 | IllegalStateException |
 | NullPointerException |
 | NumberFormatException |
 | AssertionError |
 | ExceptionInInitializerError |
 | StackOverflowError |
 | NoClassDefFoundError |
|
 | Understand which of these are thrown by the virtual machine and
recognize situations in which others should be thrown programatically. |
Section 3: API Contents

- Develop code that uses the primitive wrapper classes from the
java.lang, such as
 | Boolean,
Character,
Double,
Float,
Byte,
Short,
Integer,
Long, and/or autoboxing & unboxing.
|
 | Discuss the differences between the
String,
StringBuilder, and
StringBuffer classes.
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Given a scenario involving navigating file systems, reading from files,
writing to files, or interacting with the user, develop the correct solution
using the following classes (sometimes in combination), from
java.io:
Develop code that serializes and/or de-serializes objects
using the following APIs from
java.io:
Use standard Java SE 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 Java SE 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/PrintStream format/printf
methods.
 | Recognize and use formatting parameters (limited to: %b, %c, %d, %f,
%s) in format strings. |
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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 overriden and overloaded methods and
|
 | code that declares and/or invokes superclass, 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. |
 | Write code that uses the
NavigableSet and
NavigableMap interfaces. |
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, determine what is and is not guaranteed by
the garbage collection system, and recognize the behaviors of the
Object.finalize() method.
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: <, <=, >, >=, ==, !=),
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 | 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. |
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