very good book. It makes studying for certification interesting. covered all important aspects necessary for the exam.

it's a very well written book, with good examples and a lot of tests which is quite enough to prepare you for java 1.5 or java 1.6 certification.

Perfect! Extremely helpful! She makes the hardest things become really easy!
Congratulations for your hard work and thanks for all effort!
For sure I'll be tuned for whatever you write from now on!!!

Readable, approachable, perhaps even to a fault, this study guide does a good job of describing and preparing a ready for the SCJP exam. The book occasionally obsesses on what I'd call trick questions which delve a little too deeply into syntactic molasses. Concepts like multi-dimensional arrays, run-time versus compile-time, and variable arguments are often tested in a single question.

I took one star away for the CDROM content, specifically the e-Book. The content looks like it came directly from a Distiller-like product with zero treatment at all. A html "Table of Contents" is unreasonably course. It only list chapters. An index is unavailable. The e-book is split by chapter. Security prevents cutting or pasting, printing, or re-distilling into a one-stop searchable monolithic source. So really, the e-book has been castrated into something completely unusable. In short, why bother?

Is a very complete book that help get certified even if you only know the basics of Java

Even if you're not interested in becoming an SCJP, this is a wonderful book for reviewing basic concepts that may have become a little foggy with time.

One of the nice things about Java is that their certs are really about programming and OO. I took and passed the Java 2 exam many years ago and it was tough compared to the Microsoft (MS) exams I did for VB6 and later, when I got my MCAD in C# technologies.

The authors are a little cutesy sometimes and this might annoy some, but the material is dry and benefits from some light humor. The review questions are really good and are tricky enough that they will make you re-think and review several times before stumbling off to a testing center.

Sun's objectives are covered section by section and the authors address very thoroughly the goals/requirements using examples that can be typed easily into your favorite IDE.

:( The sad part about the SCJP is that more employers in my city (Atlanta) don't put any stock in them. If you're finding the same blank stares from recruiters when you mention the SJCP, then don't despair. You can still benefit by having this book close by, as a reference and as a source for technical interview questions.