Exam Objectives
Section 1: Declarations and Access Control
- Write code that declares, constructs and initializes
arrays of any base type using any of the permitted forms
both for declaration and for initialization.
- Declare classes, nested classes, methods, instance
variables, static variables and automatic (method local)
variables making appropriate use of all permitted modifiers
(such as public, final, static, abstract, etc.). State the
significance of each of these modifiers both singly and in
combination and state the effect of package relationships on
declared items qualified by these modifiers.
- For a given class, determine if a default constructor
will be created and if so state the prototype of that
constructor.
- Identify legal return types for any method given the
declarations of all related methods in this or parent
classes.
Section 2: Flow control, Assertions, and Exception Handling
- Write code using if and switch statements and identify
legal argument types for these statements.
- Write code using all forms of loops including labeled
and unlabeled, use of break and continue, and state the
values taken by loop counter variables during and after loop
execution.
- Write code that makes proper 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: The exception may
be a runtime exception, a checked exception, or an error
(the code may include try, catch, or finally clauses in any
legitimate combination).
- Write code that makes proper use of assertions, and
distinguish appropriate from inappropriate uses of
assertions.
- Identify correct statements about the assertion
mechanism.
Section 3: Garbage Collection
- State the behavior that is guaranteed by the garbage
collection system.
- Write code that explicitly makes objects eligible for
garbage collection.
- Recognize the point in a piece of source code at which
an object becomes eligible for garbage collection.
Section 4: Language Fundamentals
- Identify correctly constructed package declarations,
import statements, class declarations (of all forms
including inner classes) interface declarations, method
declarations (including the main method that is used to
start execution of a class), variable declarations, and
identifiers.
- Identify classes that correctly implement an interface
where that interface is either java.lang.Runnable or a fully
specified interface in the question.
- State the correspondence between index values in the
argument array passed to a main method and command line
arguments.
- Identify all Java programming language keywords. Note:
There will not be any questions regarding esoteric
distinctions between keywords and manifest constants.
- State the effect of using a variable or array element of
any kind when no explicit assignment has been made to it.
- State the range of all primitive formats, data types and
declare literal values for String and all primitive types
using all permitted formats bases and representations.
Section 5: Operators and Assignments
- Determine the result of applying any operator (including
assignment operators and instance of) to operands of any
type class scope or accessibility or any combination of
these.
- Determine the result of applying the boolean equals
(Object) method to objects of any combination of the classes
java.lang.String, java.lang.Boolean and java.lang.Object.
- In an expression involving the operators &, |, &&, ||
and variables of known values state which operands are
evaluated and the value of the expression.
- Determine the effect upon objects and primitive values
of passing variables into methods and performing assignments
or other modifying operations in that method.
Section 6: Overloading, Overriding, Runtime Type and Object
Orientation
- State the benefits of encapsulation in object oriented
design and write code that implements tightly encapsulated
classes and the relationships "is a" and "has a".
- Write code to invoke overridden or overloaded methods
and parental or overloaded constructors; and describe the
effect of invoking these methods.
- Write code to construct instances of any concrete class
including normal top level classes and nested classes.
Section 7: Threads
- Write code to define, instantiate and start new threads
using both java.lang.Thread and java.lang.Runnable.
- Recognize conditions that might prevent a thread from
executing.
- Write code using synchronized wait, notify and notifyAll
to protect against concurrent access problems and to
communicate between threads.
- Define the interaction among threads and object locks
when executing synchronized wait, notify or notifyAll.
Section 8: Fundamental Classes in the java.lang Package
- Write code using the following methods of the
java.lang.Math class: abs, ceil, floor, max, min, random,
round, sin, cos, tan, sqrt.
- Describe the significance of the immutability of String
objects.
- Describe the significance of wrapper classes, including
making appropriate selections in the wrapper classes to suit
specified behavior requirements, stating the result of
executing a fragment of code that includes an instance of
one of the wrapper classes, and writing code using the
following methods of the wrapper classes (e.g., Integer,
Double, etc.):
- o doubleValue
- o floatValue
- o intValue
- o longValue
- o parseXxx
- o getXxx
- o toString
- o toHexString
Section 9: The Collections Framework
- Make appropriate selection of collection
classes/interfaces to suit specified behavior requirements.
- Distinguish between correct and incorrect
implementations of hashcode methods.
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