How to Pass the 1Z0-819 Oracle Exam

Recently, I successfully passed the 1Z0-819 Oracle Exam.

Medium-sized companies rate such certificates highly and therefore may skip interview questions about Java, thus getting to the later stages of the interview quicker.

Exam Format

On the test, you need to answer 50 questions in 90 minutes. It is enough to answer 68% of the questions correctly to pass it.

Each question can have from 1 to 7 correct answers, but what is essential, it will always indicate how many correct answers in the question. The software simply won't let you choose more than you need.

You can pass the exam from home, but this has its drawbacks:

If the Internet connection blinks, then the exam will be considered as failed.
Since there is likely only one camera available at home, you need to be very careful when looking around. The observer may think that you are cheating.

Therefore, I chose to go to a certification center. I was given a small board with a marker to take notes, and they signed me into a computer.

During the exam, you can mark questions, "For review" or skip them. You will be able to return to them any time. The result of passing is shown immediately after the end of the exam.

Preparation

I spent about 45 hours preparing.

Of these, I spent most of the time watching the Udemy course in two parts (part1, part2).

To be honest, the course was hard to watch. From a 10-minute video, it was only 1-2 minutes of really useful information for me. But I still love the format of the courses because they make it easier to plan preparation and stick to your schedule.

It was tough to look at the modules in Java. There are quite a few questions on this topic in the exam, but no one uses them in real work, so there was little interest.

After completing the course, I had 1 day left before the exam. So I decided to do as many mock tests as possible. I chose this suite of 4 tests.

It has a detailed explanation for each question, which you can read after completing the attempt.

I passed practice tests at 80%, 70%, 68% and 64%, respectively. Towards the end of the day, I started making stupid mistakes. But these runs closed quite a few gaps in my knowledge (for example, the fact that you can't use

long

in switch statements).

As a result, I passed the real exam by 78%.

What you Need to pay Attention to

There are many topics on the exam (complete list on the exam page). Trick questions can be all over the place. For example, the names of well-known classes can be used in the names of generics.

public class Person<String> {
   String myField;
   ...
}

Here,

myField

has a generic type, not

java.lang.String

. Of course, there will be no syntax highlighting on the exam.

It is pretty common to encounter primitive syntax errors such as missing semicolons. Moreover, they can be both in questions about Controlling Program Flow and in questions about Streams and Lambda expressions. So you have to pay attention to every detail.

There are quite a few questions on the exam for modules and localization. But they are covered by the Udemy course and practice tests.

Good news: you can answer questions about security using just common sense (you shouldn't log sensitive data, you need to validate inputs, etc.).

The only section that I completely skipped was the use of commands:

jdeps

javac

java

jar

, etc. There is only one such question, and memorizing all the arguments of these commands looks like a waste of time.

I hope this article will help you with your preparation and good luck with the exam!