Rating: 
Summary: Don't Buy Just For Sun Certified Java Developer Exam
Review: This book will get the job done if you're using it to pass the SCJP exam. However, it is not at all helpful when it comes to the SCJD assignment. The book gets way too advanced when it comes to the SCJD part. It glosses over topics like distributed event notification, and creating a thread pooling mechanism. These things are not necessary for the exam at all and the book's explanations are way too generalized to help you understand them anyway. I found the book's style to be too formal and much less readable than the book by Kathy Sierra. If you're just taking the SCJP test, this book will work for you. But, if you're going for the SCJD, I recommend "The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam With J2SE 1.4." This latter book goes into way more detail and is much more helpful for SCJD.
Rating: 
Summary: Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide (3rd Edition)by Ph
Review: Very good book cotaining essensial material and in the same time easy to follow and understandable.
Rating: 
Summary: May be Ultimate - but not ultimately enough
Review: Yesteday, I took the JAVA 2 Programmer Exam for the first time and passed with a very comfortable margin. This text helped alot and I do recommend it. However, I have to say that the real EXAM is MUCH more difficult then the practice questions in this book. The actual EXAM (at least the version I took) requires you to think though scenarios that are not obvious, even from the "strict" information provided in this book. If you want confidence to pass the test on the first try, I would do the following: 1) Read the Gosling book "The Java Programming" Language" and code many of the examples for youself. Use a good Java IDE to step though the code and understand what it does and how variables inside specific objects change. 2) Work through many of the AWT examples from the Java Tutorial (Books or WEB) using an IDE as above. 3) Thoroughly study "The Java 2 Exam Cram" by Bill Brogden AND do his mock EXAM - it's more difficult than the one in the book being reviewed. 4) Take some WEB based mock exams (like MindQ) and/or even purchase the gEs: Java Exam simulator. Tests are kind of subjective in many ways. Some people are better test takers then others. I highly recommend a multi-faceted approach to preparing for this exam - especially if you want to really understand Java ... and not just pass the test. I would also say that including the Java 2 API reference at the back of this book is pretty useless and adds signifcantly to the cost AND the WEIGHT of this book. The Java Developer's Almanac 1999 is the best concise desktop reference for the JAVA 2 API that I've seen.
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