OCP Oracle® Certified Professional Java® SE 8 Programmer II

Introduction

Java recently celebrated its 20th birthday, since it was “born” in 1995. As with anything 20 years old, there is a good amount of history and variation between different versions of Java. Over the years, the certification exams have changed to cover different topics. The names of the exams have even changed. This book covers the Java 8 OCP exam along with the upgrade exams to Java 8.

If you read about the exam on the web, you may see information about the older names for the exam. The name changes are shown in Figure I.1. Here’s what happened. Back when Sun Microsystems owned Java, they used to have two exams. The SCJA (Sun Certified Java Associate) was meant for new programmers and the SCJP (Sun Certified Java Programmer) was meant for those who wanted broader knowledge. When Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, they renamed all of the exams from Sun to Oracle, giving us the OCJA (Oracle Certified Java Associate) and OCJP (Oracle Certified Java Programmer).

Figure I.1 Names for the exam

Then Oracle made two strategic decisions with Java 7. They decided to stop updating the OCJA exam. They also decided to cover more in the programmer space, and they split it into two exams. Now you first take the OCAJP (Oracle Certified Associate Java Programmer), also known as Java Programmer I or OCA. Then you take the OCPJP (Oracle Certified Professional Java Programmer), also ...