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 programatically.
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, writing to files, or interacting with the user,
develop the correct solution using the following classes
(sometimes in combination), from java.io: BufferedReader,
BufferedWriter, File, FileReader, FileWriter, PrintWriter, and
Console.
- 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, 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: <, <=, >, >=, ==, !=), 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.
|