A complete update to the definitive, bestselling guide to the #1 certification for Java programmers

• Written and revised by the co-developers of the original SCJP exam and now published in the Oracle Press brand
• Includes two complete practice exams—250+ practice exam questions in book and via electronic content
• Replaces SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java Study Guide

This book’s primary objective is to help you prepare for and pass Oracle’s OCA Java SE 7 and OCP Java SE 7 Programmer I & II certification exams.

If you already have an SCJP certification, all of the topics covered in the OCP 7 Upgrade exam are covered here as well. And, if for some reason it’s appropriate for you to obtain an OCPJP 5 or OCPJP 5 Java certification, the contents of the book This book follows closely both the breadth and the depth of the real exams. For instance, after reading this book, you probably won’t emerge as a regex guru, but if you study the material and do well on the Self Tests, you’ll have a basic understanding of regex, and you’ll do well on the exam. After completing this book, you should feel confident that you have thoroughly reviewed all of the objectives that Oracle has established for these exams.

In This Book

This book is organized in two parts to optimize your learning of the topics covered by the OCA 7 exam in Part I and the OCP 7 exam in Part II. Whenever possible, we’ve organized the chapters to parallel the Oracle objectives, but sometimes we’ll mix up objectives or partially repeat them in order to present topics in an order better suited to learning the material. Serialization was a topic on the old SCJP 5 and SCJP 6 exams, and recently (as of the summer of 2014), Oracle reintroduced serialization for the OCP 7 exam. Please of serialization, right down to a Self Test. In addition to fully covering the OCA 7 chapters that cover important and the bonus material will help you cover all those bases. see the Appendix A included with this book for in-depth, complete chapter coverage and OCP 7 exams, Appendix B covers OCPJP 5 and OCPJP 6 topics, and eight aspects of Oracle’s Java SE 6 Developer exam at are available for download at McGraw-Hill Professional's Media Center see Appendix C for details).

Table of Contents

Part I: OCA and OCP

1 Declarations and Access Control

2 Object Orientation

3 Assignments

4 Operators

5 Working with Strings, Arrays, and Arraylists

6 Flow Control and Exceptions

Part II: OCP

7 Assertions and Java 7 Exceptions

8 String Processing, Data Formatting, Resource Bundles

9 1/0 and NIO

10 Advanced 00 and Design Patterns

11 Generics and Collections

12 Inner Classes

13 Threads

14 Concurrency

15 JDBC

Appendix A: Serialization

Appendix B: Classpaths and JARs

Appendix C: About the Download

About the Authors

Kathy Sierra was a co-developer of the SCJP exam and the SCEA exam. She was also a master trainer for Sun Educational Services, where she taught Java instructors. Kathy’s full-time job since 1998 has been to help others learn Java and prepare for the SCJP exam, and she also is also the sole founder of the world’s largest Java certification web site, Javaranch.com. Kathy has worked for Sun Educational Services worldwide headquarters in the course development, customer training, and certification departments.

Bert Bates is a Sun Certified Programmer for Java and has been developing software for the last 20 years. He has participated in the development of the SCJP, SCEA, and SCWCD exams. He has also been teaching software development, including Java programming, for many years, with a particular interest and background in artificial intelligence.