Zend Certification Practice Exams

Are you good enough?

I studied for the PHP4 exam last year; by which i mean i purchased the study guide, the practice questions book and spent a good few hours going through each and every Array, Date and String function, learning their syntax and signatures off-by-heart.

This time around (for the PHP5 exam) i don't fancy doing that and i wanted to see if i could walk in and pass without preparing for it... but i was a little afraid of doing that and falling flat on my face.

Practice makes perfect

Luckily for me, Zend now do online practice exams that cost as little as $2 a go (10 for $20).

The interface is very similar to the Pearson Vue actual exam (it's done on-screen with forms/fields to fill in) and it has the same number of questions and time limit (you can still answer questions after the time has expired).

One of the annoying parts of the Zend exam process is that you get no feedback on your results, other than the simple PASS / FAIL; did i ace the exam or just scrape through? The mock exams however offer at least the general gist of where you did well or badly. Once the exam is over you are presented with a screen that shows each of the topic areas and a grade of FAIL/PASS/EXCELLENT. This lets you focus on your problem areas and identify weaknesses.



This screenshot shows two results: the top is how you did within the time limit; the bottom is how you did after the time limit expired (in this case my internet connection went down at the start - and obviously i had to make some deliberate mistakes in the Database Access section, to show the "pass" grading!).

Stop cheating - i saw that!

It's tempting to look up the answers to the questions you don't know or are unsure about.

In fact i think you should do this!

You don't get feedback on specific questions and you'll never know if your answer is right or wrong; i think it's worthwhile verifying your answers if you're unsure on something particular.

My technique was to always answer the question BEFORE looking up the right answer - and then never change it if it was wrong. It's no big deal admitting that you don't know the answer, this is the right time to find that out so that you can work on fixing it.

For example: this test taught me that making a variable global from within a function (global $a, $b;) doesn't just import globals into the function scope, it exports them out too (dunno why i never knew that before). I wouldn't have thought my answer was wrong, or learnt about this, if i hadn't have checked the result of the question's code.

Using the manual and executing the code can help you learn as you go - just make sure you don't cheat... <cliche>you're only cheating yourself!</cliche>

Worth Taking?

The PHP5 certification is different to the old PHP4 one: the new one's worth having!

I know some people dismiss the certification:"I have years of experience and have written lots fo code - i don't need no stinking certification".

These practice tests are a quick and non-commital way to explore that statement further. A single test costs $10 - a small price to pay to get the measure of the worthiness of the certification (both for your own skill and potentially for those you might employ).

• If you kick some ass with these practice tests then it's only $125 to call yourself "ZEND CERTIFIED!" or however much it might be to put your team through and use it as a selling point for clients - "All our staff are Zend certified engineers".
  
  
• If you take the test and fail, then you know that doing the formal certification is actually worth something - those that have it know more than you do.
  

Some of the areas it covers are quite advanced and will filter out newbies who just picked up a "Learn PHP in 24hrs" book.

Things like...

• XSS/CSRF/session security issues


• XML/XPATH/DOM/SimpleXML


• OOP Patterns (i got questions on Observer and Strategy patterns)


• Interfaces/Autoloading/SPL/Exceptions


• DB stuff like sql injections, transactions, prepared queries, PDO, Sqlite and Mysqli

...would tell me that you're a probably a half decent programmer; you're atleast up-to-speed with modern PHP practices which would be a good start in my eyes.

Conclusion

These practice tests are a nice little product.

For people working up to taking the exam they let you test yourself before taking the $125 exam and highlight weaknesses that need addressing.

For those skeptical about the exam they provide a cheap way of evaluating the type of questions asked and skill level that a ZCE might have.