Zend PHP 5 Certification Exam Changes

[anonymousdude]

Question for anyone that has taken the PHP 5 Certification exam recently.  I noticed the following statement on Zend's website, "The new certification exam has been completely rewritten, and is a completely new exam, not just an "upgrade" of the previous version."  http://www.zend.com/services/certification/php-5-certification/  Unfortunately this document isn't dated so I have no idea how long ago it changed. 

 

I know there have been plenty of previous posts on this topic and I did a search and read quite a few of them.  One trend I noticed was that most of the people who said they took the exam awhile back said it was easy, and it seemed most of the people who took the exam more recently said it was actually harder than the mock tests.  Which got me wondering if maybe the mock tests weren't upgraded with the test itself.

 

Anyway, I'm just trying to get some feedback from anyone who took the test recently and how you thought it compared to the mock tests.  One issue I have in with the mock tests is that there are some really off the wall questions, that aren't listed in the topics on the Zend site or in the Study Guide.  I've seen questions on Expat XML functions, gzip file compression, and SQLite.  Which makes me wonder, do I really need to study this stuff or are the practice exams just not that accurate?

 

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[oni-kun]

do I really need to study this stuff

 

Yes, Yes you do.

 

And you'd get a lot more replies had you posted this in the Misc. forum, This isn't a post requiring criticism or help on code.