Comments on: The Zend Certification Exam: What to Expect

By: LAYGO

LAYGO — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:20:12 +0000

Awesome read. I just decided last week that I *NEEDED* to be certified after watching a presentation by Zend on all of their products. I eventually want to include the Zend Framework cert as well. I’ve been working with PHP since 2000-2001, but never OOP. I’m applying that now to my skillset & hope I can include the cert soon!

By: Abhijit Ghatnekar

Abhijit Ghatnekar — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:02:44 +0000

Hello ,

I’m a beginner in PHP. I keep switching my development work between J2EE, Python and now I’m learning PHP. I wanted to ask you , whether it will be the right decision for me to appear for the ZCE, which currently I’m preparing very hard for. Second question which I wanted to ask is a bit technical and concerned with PHP OO.
We create objects in PHP, with the new keyword. Does it return a reference to the object constructed on the heap , or by value ? Within a class’s method does $this refer to a copy of the object or the actual object itself ?
Please guide me regarding the same, I’ll be highly grateful.
Thanks and regards,
Abhijit

By: Links, Links and Links - Know more about the Test | Zend PHP 5 Certification Blog

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:22:36 +0000

[...] a Zend PHP Certified Engineer (Good Revision Aid PDF) What To Expect Robert Peake: Zend Certified Engineer Doing what Im doing? Taking the Zend certification [...]

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:03:45 +0000

Thanks for the post Will, I’m revising and trying to understand what the test involves at the moment. I found some inconstancies with the study guide and test book. The guide misses some test sections out, and the test book adds new sections not mentioned on the Zend explanation of the tests.

The guide book has no reference to date/time at all, where the test book has whole sections on it. In your experience is their many date and time questions in the ZCE test?

I thank you for your post, as I have referenced it in my PHP 5 Certification Revision Blog. Which I started once found that the Book and my Knowledge alone may not be enough to qualify.

Adam

By: Will Fitch

Will Fitch — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:51:48 +0000

Hello Patrick,

Just taking into account what you stated, I would say no. The current ZCE test specifically covers PHP5 object-oriented programming capabilities and techniques, migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 and other new bits of functionality introduced in PHP5.

Having three years of experience is huge, but you should cover new PHP5 functionality. It shouldn’t take you long to do so. A couple of links to take note of are http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.php and http://us2.php.net/manual/en/migration5.php. This will give you a jump on PHP5.

Also, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to spend a few bucks and get the practice exams to see if you’re ready. It is completely worth the investment!

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:55:50 +0000

Thanks for your experiance….
studying for my exam right now and plan to take the exam after 2 weeks. I have 3 years of experience in PHP 4.
Is this enough to pass the exam?

By: Zend Certification Exam experience - C

Zend Certification Exam experience - C — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:17:24 +0000

[...] Will Fitch – http://www.phpfever.com/zce-what-to-expect.html [...]

By: Will Fitch

Will Fitch — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:21:56 +0000

Congratulations, Carlton!

I’m very happy to hear you are part of the “club”. Well earned treat!

I’m also happy to hear that no PDO questions came up. You should be getting your framed certificate and big “Zend Certified Engineer” sticker in 6 – 8 weeks!

Again, congratulations!!!

By: Carlton Dickson

Carlton Dickson — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:54:36 +0000

Yay, I passed the exam…the first few questions were a little tricky but soon found my rhythmn, all in time for the release of Battlefield, treated myself to a copy of as a reward!
Thanks again for your advice, I don’t think a question about PDO came up!

By: Will Fitch

Will Fitch — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:56:52 +0000

Hi, Carlton.

I’m pretty excited about GTA as well!! I can’t wait!

As for your question on PDO. If you receive any questions regarding PDO, it will not be database specific. The functionality of PDO, however, is possible to show up as it is PHP functionality. You should not receive any database specific questions (how does MySQL handle this, PostgreSQL handle that), but SQL questions can be present.

I wouldn’t personally worry too much about PDO questions. There are way too many other areas to cover, and if there are any PDO questions, it will be very few (or even one).

As for the streams section, know your file system functions (file_get_contents, fopen, fwrite, flock, fclose) and the basics of streams functionality (http://us2.php.net/manual/en/book.stream.php).

I also can’t urge you enough to breakdown and pay a few bucks for those practice tests that Zend/phpArchitect put out. They are VERY VERY close to the real deal.

Thanks also for the additional links. It will certainly help others expand their readiness for this examination.

By: Carlton Dickson

Carlton Dickson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:15:05 +0000

Thanks for this entry….studying for my exam right now and aiming for a May/June exam date…although the release of GTA might interupt this week’s revision

I have a massive amount of work to do on “Streams and network programming” and a little on databases…does databases include PDO at all?

Hope you don’t mind me posting these links but they are the experiences of others that have done the test:
http://benramsey.com/archives/passing-the-zend-php-certification-exam/
http://sidyou.blogspot.com/2007/03/zend-certification-exam.html
http://shiflett.org/blog/2005/apr/zend-certification-self-test
http://jonpeck.blogspot.com/2006/12/zend-certification-and-drink-recipe.html