Archive for April, 2009

IBM Certified Associate Application Developer - Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5

http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/14011504.shtml

Exam LOT-738 Developing Applications with IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5

Being a Sametime developer takes a thorough understanding of the Sametime APIs, the Connect client as well as the underlying architecture.

Prove your might be getting certified. Click below for the best available exam prep. We have also included the exam competencies, number of questions and subtopics you can expect. Happy testing!

Exam LOT-738 Developing Applications with IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5

Exam 738: Developing Applications with IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5

Exam Competencies

Exam Type: Multiple Choice

Description:

Covers Sametime 7.5 material as it relates to these competency areas:

* API, Libraries, and Components
* Creating/Interpreting Code
* Notes Client IM Integration
* Sametime Connect Client Plug-In Development
* Sametime Links Toolkit
* Understanding Meetings
* Understanding Methods

API, Libraries, and Components

+API Packages

1. Chat Logging
2. Community API Java package
3. Community API Services
4. Community Services agents
5. Java Class files
6. Sametime Architecture
7. Sametime Authentication
8. Sametime get host agent
9. Sametime Places
10. Sametime Storage Service
11. Sametime Token field
12. SametimeApplet applet
13. Script libraries
14. Token database
15. WebQueryOpen event
16. WhoIsHere awareness
17. WhoIsOnLineServiceListener Interface

Creating/Interpreting Code

1. Applet code
2. Java code
3. ResolveNamesFailed method
4. Sametime Links
5. Sametime Toolkits
6. Whiteboard viewer
7. WhoIsHere
8. WhoIsOnline applet

Notes Client IM Integration

1. Client Integration Architecture
2. Integrating Sametime with Notes Forms
3. Integrating Sametime with Notes Views
4. Programming Options
5. Understanding Options for Notes Integration

Sametime Connect Client Plug-In Development

1. Creating a MiniApp
2. Creating a Run/Launch Configuration
3. Defining Dependencies
4. Defining Extension Points
5. Eclipse Platform Components Used by Sametime Connect
6. Plug-In Deployment
7. Preparing the Development Environment
8. Working with Extensions
9. Working with Manifests

Sametime Links Toolkit

1. Sametime Links Architecture
2. Sametime Links Programming Choices
3. Sametime Links Syntax

Understanding Meetings

1. Add meeting viewers
2. Create Meeting method
3. Join a meeting
4. Meeting handle method
5. Meeting Services API
6. NodeController

Understanding Methods

1. Create Chat Methods
2. Create Message methods
3. Enable Java applets
4. Hide Viewer methods
5. Register/Unregister methods
6. Resolve name methods
7. User logon methods
8. User status control
9. User status methods

Exam LOT-738 Developing Applications with IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5

Exam LOT-720 IBM Lotus Notes Domino 7 System Administration Operating Fundamentals

Exam LOT-720 IBM Lotus Notes Domino 7 System Administration Operating Fundamentals is both a challenging and rewarding certification exam for Domino 7 certified administrators.

With these challenges, the proper study material ensures you pass the exam for the first time.

Here’s some great meta data information on the exam that’s on IBM’s Certification Website.

When you schedule this exam, you’ll get 60 minutes to complete 40 questions. Passing requires a score of at least 75%.

There are 40 scored items and 5 unscored items. Make sure you study.

Related certifications:

IBM Certified System Administrator - Lotus Notes and Domino 7

IBM Certified Associate System Administrator - Lotus Notes and Domino 7

Study Tip: Can you please focus ….

CertFX specializes in tests for myriad of technologies such as Apple, AIX, WebSphere, WebSphere Portal, DB2 … the list goes on and on.

Going on 7 years in the business, we have quite a few study tips to share with you. Take a look, let us know what you think will help you pass your next certification exam.

Believe it or not, we learn exponentially better, when we focus on one thing. (i.e. certification exams).

What does this mean?

Turn off the radio and TV,

Tell your friends, significant others, etc. that you are studying for an upcoming certification exam and you need them to be quiet.

Another thing, the worst item you can have with you when studying is your iPod. Listening to music will distract you and force you to not focus on learning.

Find a space that works really well for you, where you can focus on shorter periods of studying, and then of course take your well-earned breaks.

Study for your certification in manageable chunks - 1 hour

1. Next time you are studying, set yourself a time limit. Mine is fairly simply. I study for 25 minutes and then I take a five minute break.

2. Place a watch or clock where you can see it. Use the timer on your watch if you have it. I simply set my alarm on my iPhone for 25 minutes. When it goes off I take my planned break. Now, here is the most important thing, whatever you do, don’t be tempted to continue studying. Take your break and take it NOW!

3. Okay. It’s break time. Stand up and leave where you have been studying. If you are sitting at your desk, stand up and go for a walk and stretch your legs and get some fresh air. When I am studying, I use my five minute break for the most important thing, a cup of coffee! Decaf of course while studying.

4. You can do anything during this break, as long as it is not studying

Keep studying, you will very soon get into the habit of giving yourself a break, and allowing your memory to digest everything you have learned.

Study Tip: Can I see that on a chart please?

I had a boss that I worked for and you could explain things to him for hours upon hours. However, the only way he wanted to see it, and the only way he would remember it, is with a graph.

I was amazed at the amount of things you could create a graph to get a point across. So, in honor of him, I found some graphs and some great data to share with you.

While I focus on Certification Exams for vendors like Blackberry, Lotus and other vendors. A lot of test tips can be found for taking things like a College Entrance Exam or your driving test, I always do my best to make sure they are tailored to our business. That’s why you are here, right. Pass that certification exam, land the dream job and make some good money.

This one happened to me the other day. I was reading an article from Debbie Lynd, one of the folks in the Domino space that I just idolize. The article was about Domino 8.5 and DAOS and I had just finished reading about iPhone enabling a Domino web app, fault tolerance and the Sametime gateway. So there I am reading this article and then all of a sudden, I realize that I have been staring at the page for a few minutes without actually reading anything?

The cause? Trying to take in too much information at once.

Hopefully you have heard this before, or experienced it first hand, but your brain works better if you do small chunks of learning instead of big chunks.

It is recommended that your study sessions last between fifteen and forty five minutes. Take five to ten minute breaks between each of these study sessions. Don’t take just my word for it.

Scientists have been proving, conclusively, for over 30 years that taking breaks improves memory function. It’s even been proven to work for rats! The theory and conclusions are that when we spend time learning, we remember more information from the beginning and the end of the session and we typically forget the middle.

By studying in shorter sessions, you remove the middle and don’t have the opportunity to forget it.

So, on to some really ‘jazzy’ graphs. If you are ‘learning’ for two hours, your memory works like this:

But if you break this two hour period up into 25 minute learning sessions with five minute breaks, you memory works like this:

Studying or practicing in shorter more manageable chunks is a really important habit to get into and it will help you to revise more effectively.

The key is to spend your 5 minute breaks distracting yourself, but only for five minutes! Remember - have lots of short breaks, at least one per hour and you will recall more information in your exam.

Remember, CertFX is the number one provider of certifications for Blackberry, Lotus, WebSphere, WebSphere Portal ….

We have 30k happy customers and our money back guarantee ensures you are successful at taking your IT certification exam, or your money back.

Jason’s Power Certification Exam Tips

As many of my friends know, I can spend hours upon hours giving tips on taking the latest exams. So here is my quick and concise bullet list of items to make sure you are fully prepared for your exam.

Before I start, these tips are obviously geared towards IT Certifications such as WebSphere Portal, Lotus, Blackberry and others.

However, these tips will help anyone for any exam, including college exams, high school exams - but our main goal is to get you to pass that certification exam for IBM, Lotus, WebSphere, DB2, AIX, Apple, Oracle!!!!!

Get ready the night before. Make sure you have everything you need - two forms of identification, car keys, etc.

Know where and what time your exam will be.

Don’t be late! Set as many alarms as you like to ensure that you arrive at your exam in plenty of time.

Take the tutorial before you start the exam. Becoming familiar with the experience will make you more relaxed and allow the correct answers to flow.

Make sure you know how long you have to sit the exam, and keep your eye on the clock. Whenever I take an exam, the first thing I do is write down the number of questions, the time I started the exam and the time limit.

Consider how many marks are available for each question and allocate a proportional amount of time for each one. I have noticed a trend with the new Domino 8.5 Lotus Certification exams. They are allowing you 90 seconds per question. Starting off and taking two minutes per question will hurt you, and it will hurt you bad.

Read the question! I know this sounds simple, but many test takers misread questions.

If you can’t answer a question, leave it for now and come back to it at the end if you have time.

Relax… Take a deep breath at the beginning of the exam, this will help you to collect your thoughts and keep you calm whilst you are writing.

Studying is only half the battle

Good preparation is only half the battle in a Multiple Choice Question exam. When you sit down from the exam, you’re not necessarily thinking of the exam months prior. That is where we come into.

When we get ready to start a practice test, we think about the examiners. We think about how they may try to trip you up. We learn their goals and what they want to accomplish.

With all certification exams, the main goal is to sort the ‘wheat from the chaff’. When you are in there staring at a question and you get that sinking feeling that the test creator is out to trip you up, there is a good reason. That is because they are, and you need to be wise to their strategies.

Multiple Choice Question exams (MCQ) are found everywhere. High school, college and even that driving test that you passed by the skin of your teeth. Here is a list of tips that I compiled which will help you perfect your MCQ answering technique:

Most importantly, READ the questions. Careless reading results in needless - and potentially costly - mistakes. If you miss the word ‘not’ in the stem (which of these is not a symptom of…) you could end up getting the entire question wrong, just because of one word. This one trips me up the most. I have found a very simple solution. In this scenario

“Which of the following tasks would James not do to accomplish …..”

When I read the question, I put a picture of James in my head and I picture him trying to accomplish something and then I see him “not” doing it. Look for the words that provide the negatives, or heck, even the dreaded double negative. When you read a question and you skim it and you go “Wow, got this one nailed. Answer B, click next.” STOP!!! You read it to quick. Take a look for words such as not, cannot, won’t, usually, sometimes and other words that can change the entire position of the exam. The following is probably the most popular preface statement on exam ..

“Which of the following best describes ….”

At first glance, I know I am looking for the answer that is TRUE. However, if I take the question a step further “Which of the following best describes what James would not do to enable ….”

Latching on to the preface statement without catching the clause would cause me to miss the question. I would say on average I see these types of “not” clauses on 20 to 30% of a typical IT certification exam.

Pace yourself and don’t spend too long on one question. I learned this bad trait in High School. I would encounter a question that I had absolutely no idea the answer of. So I decided it was war. It was that question against me. I would stare at the question forever, in hopes of out staring the paper and a magical answer coming out of it. Next thing I know the test is over and I am still fighting with a random question. Talk about a losing battle. Not only did I not beat the question, but it took me down in relation to other questions.

If you don’t know the answer, move on and return to the question at the end. All exams include a “Mark” capability for you to mark the question for you to review later. It’s there for a reason. Don’t avoid it, it is your friend!

Here’s a funny one that I still don’t understand. I’ll blame James and say he does this (okay, it’s me, but I like to blame him for some things). I run into a question that I have no clue about. I click the “Mark” checkbox and say “hmm, I bet the answer is A.” Now, I have marked a question saying I don’t know this, but yet, I have selected an answer. This is the wrong approach. If you leave a question, be extremely careful to leave the corresponding answer box blank. I have decided to come back to it for a reason. Plus, when I am reviewing the questions that are marked, and I note the checkbox on an answer. I am going to read into that as a suggestion of what the correct answer is.

Trust yourself. Your initial answer (or guess) is most likely to be right. The psychology behind this is subconsciously you have an inclination of the correct answer, so don’t doubt yourself.

An educated guess or an attempt to deduce the right answer is often better than leaving it blank.

Be on the lookout for double negatives. Two of my favorites:

  • not uncommon
  • not infrequently

Both mean often.

Answers that contain words like always and never are less likely to be correct. Statements that contain sometimes, may or might are more likely to be correct.

Beware of the word typically; this means ‘usually’. There might be an option given that’s correct, but rare - this is not ‘typical’.

You need to practice memory muscle to get ahead

This sounds like a no-brainer. However, you’ll be shocked at the amount of people who do not take advantage of this concept. Simulate your exam procedures during your learning. You will build up “muscle memory” in your brain. Your body becomes use to how you are studying and when you walk in to take the exam - it’s just a familiar exercise and is just like another one of your study exercises.

I remember when I was in college and was taking Social Psychology, whenever I had a closed book exam, I would study and practice answering difficult questions without access to my notes or textbook.

Another one of my personal favorites. My roommate would create notecards of questions to study. Then he would spend days studying the questions he created. What could be easier? Of course you’re going to know your own questions (at least you should).

He would tell me “I have this exam mastered.” When he would leave, I would change out all of his note cards and when he came back, I asked him to go through the questions that he had. This had disastrous results for him.

After all, you’re not the one picking items for the exam at the testing center, so asking yourself questions that you have made up on your own is usually a poor way to simulate the behavior called for on an exam.

That’s one of the reasons why products like certification practice tests are essential when preparing for an IT certification exam — they provide you with difficult practice items that someone else has written.

I tested this theory recently. I was taking BCX-222 Supporting BlackBerry Enterprise Server/IBM Lotus Domino, one of several Blackberry Certification Exams at a Prometric testing center. I took their exam guide and created index cards for each topic. I looked up what I felt they were going to ask and then studied them over and over.

I followed our recommendations and did not do a mass study, rather, breaking the sessions out over several days. I went and took the exam. I walked in with 100% confidence. Launched the exam and was shocked that the exam questions I came up with only accounted for a small number of questions.

I got back to the office (without a successful score) and sat down and reviewed a bunch of index cards that one of my peers put together. Not only did I have no idea to the answers, several of them covered the materials that were on the exam.

I asked James how they were so applicable and he explained he had already taken a Blackberry exam and he understood how their questions are created in relation to their exam guide. I am confident had I studied his index cards, I would have passed with ease.

Long story short, don’t study only what you know. You need to study what you don’t know, and follow the answers to the questions and learn more about the answer. Learn the concept and you’ll be prepared for success.

Study Tip: What works better? One long study session, or several study sessions?

Suppose you have a tight schedule and can only afford to spend 6 hours studying for a major exam. One common question is whether you should “mass” the hours together right before the exam (to keep the material fresh in memory), or whether you should “space” the hours apart over a few weeks.

Quite a bit of research suggests that spaced practice is generally superior to massed practice

For example, all things being equal:

You’ll get more mileage out of three 2-hour blocks than one 6-hour block, even though the total amount of time studying is identical in both cases/

So if you have a particularly busy schedule and can only spend a few hours studying, be sure to use them well.

When is the worst time to study? Late night. It has been found that after work and late hours, you are looking at degraded memory retention, mental and physical fatigue. Even more concerning is the following day when you take the exam, you will be prone to careless mistakes.

Study Tip: Don’t Psych Yourself Out

Do you have your arms full of baggage?

It’s been demonstrated that when you carry extra emotional baggage — “I’ve got to ace this exam” or “If I screw up, I’ll never get this new job” — performance suffers, so don’t lose sight of the big picture.

The most constructive approach is to focus on the task at hand, put in as much time studying as you can afford, and just do your best. Returning to the luggage metaphor: all the excess baggage can be dealt with later, if you’re so inclined. Unpack after the exam.

A certain amount of anxiety is normal (or even useful) when studying for an exam, but if you feel overwhelmed or feel that uncontrollable emotions are interfering with your exam performance, you may be suffering from test anxiety. If you think this is a possibility, you should look at rescheduling your exam.

If things are really tough, you can look into techniques to reduce your anxiety (e.g., relaxation training). If the test center you use is a high traffic center and there is a lot of distraction, it might be helpful to take the exam in a less stressful environment.

I took an exam recently where the woman testing next to me had apparently failed the exam numerous times. Every time she encountered a question that was concerning, she would sigh and breath heavy and shuffle her feet.

At first, I found it amusing and then I found that I could not focus on my exam at all. Every time I would get half way through the question, she would sigh, or moan. In a case like the worst thing you can do is to continue taking the exam without notifying the proctor that there is a problem.

It is the job of the proctor to ensure you have the optimal testing environment. If it is not, raise your hand and raise your concerns. Serious distractions can be addressed with Prometric or Pearson Vue and you can have your test rescheduled.