Congratulation Gary!
First of all, I must congratulate myself for getting this done. For almost a year, I have been thinking to take the exam, but my project schedules have been crazy. I hardly find time to prepare the certification. Three weeks ago, I decided to give a shot. I studied two weekends, and spend about 1 hour each day. And today, I did! I must say that I feel it is a kind of accomplishment. This test is not easy!
Here I will try to summarized my feeling about the test and how I prepared the test. Hopefully, it will provided some help to those who are thinking to take the test.
The Procedures
First of all, go to Mule training website and paid 250 USD online and schedule a test at the same time. I did my test at my local test center. There, I have to lock away my cell phone, watch, wallet, even my hat! It is very quiet and comfortable place. Not many people there either.
The exam is 2 hours long. That is plenty time to ponder each question carefully. At the first 10 minutes, MuleSoft did a survey about my experience in Mule, how I prepared the test, what role I play, etc. I am not sure why they should ask these questions at all. One thing really makes me suspicious is that if you are a very experience developer, you may get harder questions. It is just my guess!
How Was My Test Results?
It took me 88 minutes to submit the answer. I know I had plenty time, so that I read each question very carefully and did not plan to review them once I am done with all the questions.
The following are the results I got:
Creating Application Networks: 100.00%
Designing APIs: 100.00%
Building API Implementation Interfaces: 100.00%
Deploying and Managing APIs and Integrations: 75.00%
Accessing and Modifying Mule Events: 83.33%
Structuring Mule Applications: 66.66%
Routing Events: 80.00%
Handling Errors: 80.00%
Troubleshooting and Testing Mule Applications: 66.66%
Writing DataWeave Transformations: 100.00%
Using Connectors: 83.33%
Processing Records: 100.00%
Result: PASS
Roughly, my overall score is about 89%. I think I did pretty OK given that I did not have enough time to prepare. I have no idea why my trouble shooting score is only 66.66%. I thought this is my strongest area.
How Do I Feel About The Questions?
Overall, I think the questions are very good, but many of them are very hard to answer with confidence. About 15% of the questions are really hard.
The challenges come from several fronts.
Firstly, most of the questions are very long. You must read the question at least two times before you answer the question. This really tests your English as the questions are very tricky.
Secondly, most questions are really difficult to 100% sure from the first glance. You have to read them very carefully. Sometimes the brackets, comma, and semicolon make the difference.
Thirdly, some questions are rare to encounter in real life, such as exporting artifacts from Anypoint Studio. We normally don't do this.
All in all, I think MuleSoft training department did a good job. It seems the Mule 4 MCD is a bit harder the Mule 3 one.
How I Prepared My Test
I really don't have the time to go through all the training materials. Definitely no time to go through all the DIY.
Here is the procedure I took. I think if you are experience developer and want to pass the test at the first shot. You can follow my way.
- Go to the final Quiz at the last Module of the training material, and try to answer them. They are pretty difficult actually. Many of them, I really had trouble to answer at the first time. The good news is that for each question, if you did not answer correctly, the website tell you the right answer. Thus you can figure out why.
- Quickly go through each chapter and all the slides. Notes down what the chapter is about.
- After the first two steps, I start to create many mini-code to really understand the details about connectors, error handling, different scopes, etc.
- Take notes. Take a lot of notes. These notes really help me to remember the nitty-mitty details. Remember, to pass the test, you must pay attention to tiny details.
Some Thoughts About The Certification
Definitely, it worths the time and energy to prepare and take the Exam. It really lets us to start paying attention to details and try to think about the reason about the way MuleSoft implements connectors, design patterns, and other systems. It is not for beginner anyway.
Don't take the delta test. To me, it is really better to challenge ourselves and take Mule 4 MCD.
The questions have a lot of room to improve.
- It should really focus on how our daily development works.
- Questions should more focus on development of Mule flows, less memorization of syntaxes.
- More questions on design and troubleshooting.
- More questions on problem solving skills.
