Since the grid search query is going to take a while to complete and most of my projects are either being held up by the query or something else (if there’s a project I’ve forgotten about, please remind me!), I thought I’d use up one of my PHP5 Certification practice exam credits.
The Results
Things I failed
- Database Access
- Arrays
- PHP4/5 Differences
Things I passed
- String manipulation and regular expressions
- Functions
- Security
- OOP
- Streams and Network Programming
Thing I got an “Excellent” rating on
- Design
- Basic Language
- XML & Web Services
- Web Features
Conclusion
The overall result was a Pass, but there were some things that surprised me:
- Failing Arrays- how do I fail one of the most basic concepts in PHP ? Looks like I’ll have to brush up on that.
- Passing Streams and Network programming- I don’t generally work with streams & sockets- although I have thought about glueing libSL to PHP via a secondlife:// stream :-)
- Excelling in Design- WTF?- knowing the theory of design concepts is probably why I excelled in design, but it’s not something I would’ve predicted
The two things I would like to improve upon are the Database & Streams areas of PHP5- if anyone can recommend a good book or two that focus on the subject, I’d be grateful; One could argue I should focus on the differences between PHP4 and PHP5, but since PHP4 is nearing the end of it’s life cycle, I’d prefer to focus on current elements of PHP- leaving the differences between PHP4 & PHP5 to when I work on PHP4-based applications (WordPress/Mu/bbPress etc).
