1Z0-1113 - I passed!

I passed the exam!

This morning, I had my certification exam for the 1Z0-1113 Helidon Microservices Developer Professional, and I passed!

As I've already written several posts about, I was curious what the exam would be like. To be honest, I was afraid of 60 questions asking nitty-gritty obscure detail questions, like the Java exams tend to do. Or that there would be questions where several answers are correct, as was often the case in the mock exams. I was less concerned about the tendency from some of the mock exams that the answers would be straight up wrong.

Credit where credits due: I had nothing to worry about. Most of the questions were asking questions that made sense, testing knowledge that you should have at this point.

I can't tell you the exact questions I got, of course, and you'll get other questions than I did anyway, but I think it might be useful for you that I share some characteristics:

• About 10 of the questions were Which TWO or Which THREE are correct
• Each question was tagged with which exam sub-topic it addressed, for instance Describe the data access API in Helidon MP
• I got at least one question from each of the exam sub-topics
• None of the questions felt like they were trying to trick me
• I gave feedback on five of the questions, as I thought several of the answers could be deemed correct. On two of them, it was mainly as feedback, whereas on the three others, I was not sure about which answer they wanted, as both were correct
• Many questions were like "what is the role of X in Helidon" (or Helidon MP), or which statement about X is correct
• Helidon (2.x) offers several ways of doing things, for instance how to use MP config or which security mechanisms to use. I read most about the ones I find most useful, reading others just briefly. Several of the questions made me regret that decision.
• I had just a few questions on Helidon SE, but also a handful of questions about the difference between SE and MP on certain areas
• Two of the questions were about the exact same concept, so I could use the potential answers for each to exclude answers
• Both the questions and the alternatives were short, so I didn't need to spend a lot of time analyzing each question
• I had plenty of time. I spent about half of the given 90 minutes for the first take, then I revisited the questions I had marked for review (which were about 15). After that, I quickly skimmed through all the questions as a sanity-check, and then I skimmed through again, counting how many of them I was certain about getting right (think I ended at 39). With ten minutes left on the clock, I submitted.
• The passing threshold is 70%, which means getting 42 of the 60 questions right. I ended at 80%, so I had 48 correct answers.
• I didn't get to see which answers were right and which were wrong. After I had submitted the test, I got straight to the result page, which looked exactly like the screenshot at the top of this post.
• On My results at Oracle CertView, I can now see the list of topics where I had at least one wrong answer, and the text "Feedback on your performance is printed below. The report lists the objectives for which you answered a question incorrectly". It lists the sub-topics. My 12 wrong answers were distributed over 8 sub-topics.
• The technical solution was excellent. No hassle, no nothing. I could see a tiny picture of myself (through my webcam) at the edge of my screen, but I was more focused on the exam
• When I joined at 9 AM, to do the check-in 30 minutes before the start time, I closed all my tabs, installed the browser plugin and pressed a button to do the automated camera-and-microphone test. When that was done, I showed my ID in a designated area of the screen, and it was automatically scanned. I think all of this took about two minutes. Once done, I got straight to the start exam page, which surprised me a bit, as my exam time was 09.30-11.00. As I couldn't see a reason for waiting, I started, and immediately got at the first question. The countdown sayd 01.29.59, so everything was fine.
• I had no interaction with anyone, nor any sign indicating whether someone was on the other side of the built-in Zoom-client watching. I didn't have to think about anything Zoom related neither, it was all automatically handled.

So what would I recommend you to do if you were to take this exam? Prioritize reading the official documentation, and create a sample project where you try the different parts yourself. Try the different branches as well, for instance different ways to do config, or at the very least read about all of them.

Are the Udemy mock exams worth the money, now in hindsight? Well, you do get a good feeling of the format, and the way questions are asked is also pretty accurate. But I wouldn't spend too much time there, as I surprisingly often found the answers to be straight up wrong. If I were to do the exam again, I would do a mock exam early on, to get a grasp on what it's like and where I'm starting at, and then a couple of exams during your learning phase to see if you get the expected progress, and a final mock exam the day before your real exam. Important, though: focus on the questions and whether you can provide an answer you believe is correct. The total score and accepted answers may be wrong.

Well, now I'm an Oracle Certified Professional Helidon Microservices Developer.

I hope this blog post, and also the initial post and the previous one help you out if you're also curious about this exam. Feel free to reach out to me (you can find my contact info on the top of the page) if you have questions about the certification or the exam.