Get Professionally Certified for IBM's Rational Application Developer in 7 Easy Steps

As more companies roll out their next generation Web applications and SOAs (service-oriented architectures), one thing is clear—your future success hinges upon your ability to refine your Java skills, gain more experience, and increase your credibility as a developer. Rapidly polishing your Java and J2EE development proficiency will enable you to easily create, test, and deploy high quality software applications on time and under budget.

As you work toward achieving these goals, you should consider becoming an IBM Certified Associate Developer. Certification by IBM does more than impress your boss and colleagues (or your next hiring manager). It validates and acknowledges your ability to design, implement, test, debug, and deploy J2EE Web and Java applications using IBM software. Certification signifies professional recognition that you have achieved a higher level of product-specific knowledge and programming skills.

Free Tutorials Help You Assess and Polish Your Java Skills
IBM has created a series of seven free developerWorks tutorials to help you pass the IBM Certification Test 255 and become an IBM Certified Associate Developer. This certification is designed primarily for entry-level developers or students to prove they are experienced using IBM Rational Web Developer for WebSphere Software v6.0 or IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD) for WebSphere Software v6.0. IBM's tutorials provide detailed instruction and guidance for Java and J2EE development—based on the latest industry trends. Whether you are just starting your career, or have been using Java for some time, the certification tutorials and practice tests offer a comfortable, yet private process by which you can assess your abilities or determine if you need to increase your knowledge, improve your techniques, or acquire more experience.

Each one of the seven IBM Certification Test 255 tutorials provides a self-paced educational format that you can use to evaluate your current level of Java expertise or perfect your RAD, Java, and J2EE programming abilities. The order of the tutorials mirrors the format structure of the IBM Certification exam and each tutorial can usually be completed in less than two hours.

Whether you are already working with IBM Rational Application Developer, Web Developer for WebSphere, or you are relatively new to Java, the IBM tutorials provide a simple way to become more proficient, increase your knowledge, and demonstrate your expertise in developing Web applications using servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSP), HTML, and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) technology. Passing the IBM Certification Test 255 also proves you have mastered object-oriented analysis and design techniques. The following sections briefly describe the skills and technologies you will experience in each tutorial.

Tutorial 1: Basics of the Workbench
The first tutorial covers the workbench basics—teaching you how to set your workbench preferences and manage your workspaces within Rational Application Developer for WebSphere. It familiarizes you with the concepts of views and perspectives, and guides you through the import and export of wizards. You learn how to use the Help features to assist your development, and how to use the Local History feature to compare different versions of code under development, or revert to older versions of the software you are developing.

Tutorial 2: Java Development
This tutorial provides experience in creating Java projects, packages, and methods using IBM's development tools. You'll create and use different Java classes and work with the Java editor to format your code, execute content assist, and perform many other editing tasks. After completing this tutorial you will know how to refactor your code and how to use resource and project property menus more effectively. You will also be familiar with creating and managing the Java build path, how to use resource and project property dialogs, as well various Java search functions. The exercises of this tutorial also provide you with experience using the hierarchy, task, and problems views—along with many other Java functions.

Tutorial 3: Web Development
Upon completion of this tutorial, you should understand how servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSPs), struts, JavaBeans, and deployment descriptors interact with each other. You will have experience using IBM's RAD tools, and creating both dynamic and static Web projects, as well as a basic version of a J2EE Web application that runs from start to completion. This application includes the fundamental components of a Model-View-Controller (MVC). These exercises will improve your understanding of classpath and module dependencies and let you use your own business logic to step through the process of creating and configuring a controller and a model servlet. You'll use Page Designer to add and modify JSP and JavaScript content, work with JavaBeans, and create server-side dynamic data that returns to a user's browser. You'll also get to configure the XML files required by J2EE and execute many other J2EE programming techniques.

Tutorials 4 and 5: Working with Databases and Running Java Applications
This combination tutorial teaches you how to create a database connection to any of the databases that Rational Application Developer supports, beginning with the Cloudscape database that is included in the product. You will create database tables, set up rows and columns, and populate these with data—and practice using the SQL statement wizard to automatically generate SQL code. At this point you will have enough knowledge to use WebSphere Application Server to run stand-alone and server-based J2EE applications. You'll also practice adding and removing projects from the server and creating and configuring data sources throughout this tutorial.

Tutorial 6: Debugging and Testing
By the conclusion of this section you will have practiced various debugging and testing techniques and managed breakpoints while stepping through, and debugging, Java code and JSPs. You will gain experience in viewing variables, executing and displaying expressions, performing unit testing, and practice locating and viewing WebSphere application server logs.

Tutorial 7: Packaging and Deployment
This final tutorial teaches you to create J2EE projects and allows you to practice importing and exporting J2EE modules. You will step through the process of creating and locating resources throughout the project hierarchy and work with Web and Application Deployment Descriptor Editors. After the successful completion of these sections, you should be ready to take your practice test and ultimately pass the IBM Certification Test 255.

It Pays to Be Certified
Certification by IBM has earned worldwide recognition as a legitimate way to teach developers about the strengths and features of its development tools, Java, J2EE, and more. Through these seven tutorials, IBM has created an easy learning process to quickly become productive using its development tools. The tutorials cover many of the tasks you might encounter as an IBM developer. More importantly, IBM certification validates that you have mastered the technologies and techniques necessary to be a qualified professional IBM developer. IBM Certification also prepares you for certification by other vendors, most notably, Sun Java Certification.

Additional Certification Information
IBM certification course information can be found on developerWorks. Certification test details can be found here. On the latter site, you will find information about the test objectives, requirements, a sample test, the test format, scoring, the location of additional educational resources, and other relevant information. Practice tests cost $10.00 and the IBM Certification 255 test is $150.00.