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In order to sign up for and write the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform Exam, you need to purchase an exam voucher. You can do this through Sun Educational Services at 1-800-422-8020. Since it is over the phone you will have to pay for it with a credit card. Once you have purchased the voucher, $150($180 CDN), you can register for the exam through Prometric online or phone them at 1-800-795-3926. Sun sends you a credit card reciept in the mail for you to claim on your expenses or write off on your taxes. Once you have purchased your voucher from Sun you have exactly one year to complete the exam. You can find out where the closest place to take the exam is on the sun web site. Sun lists only about a half dozen training locations in Canada, but if you go through the Prometric Test Center Locator, you will find a location closer to you.
If you have registered over the web with Prometric, they send you a login id and password and you can use their site to register for an exam. Going through this process you can select where you want to write the exam and at what time. The exam must be scheduled at least 48 hours in advance and no more than 6 weeks ahead. They even provide you with a map that includes directions to your exam center.
There are a considerable number of texts out there for you to use. In addition there is a multitude of sample exams on the web. Be sure to buy yourself a good book. People learn in different ways, so it is important to go to a bookstore and read through the first chapter of a number of them until you have found one that you feel you are learning from. I found the Exam Cram series book to be excellent. After studying the material for the exam go through some of the sample exams on the web. Once you are getting good marks on the practice exams you can be confident that you will do well on the real thing.
Sun has a published list of objectives for the exam. They have released a new version of the Programmer exam August 2002. The I/O and AWT sections of the exam have been dropped. I have tried to group my exam review into the same sections as the exam objectives.
I have compiled a whatis list that helped me with the exam. Review it before hand and make sure you can define all of the principles outlined in the list.