The first and only officially authorized book on the PHP Certification exam developed by Zend Technologies, the commercial developer of PHP. Zend's PHP Certification exam is a high-quality, carefully developed exam designed to enhance and certify the skills of the PHP professional. The Zend PHP Certification Study Guide is a concise, densely packed book that will get you up to speed quickly on the nature of the exam's questions and what to expect on exam day. It's authoritative content comes directly from those writing the exam at Zend Technologies.
F YOU'RE READING THIS BOOK, you've probably made a decision that becoming a Zend Certified Engineer is an important step in your career. And, indeed, it might well bethe certification exam will test your knowledge of PHP in many areas, ranging from the basics to the more complex topics. As PHP's adoption grows inside the enterprise, being certified can mean that you will have an edge when that dream job comes along!
The exam was designed by a number of well-known people in the PHP community in collaboration with experts in the field of computer-assisted testing. They approached it with a simple set of goals:
-
Test the level of PHP knowledge of the candidate without prejudice to other technologies
-
Use a set of testing questions that reflect real-world scenarios as accurately as possible
-
Avoid questions that rely on a person's understanding of the language rather than his or her understanding of PHP and its related programming techniques
It's very important to understand these points as you approach your studies, as well as the exam itself, in particular when it comes to testing technologies that are used in conjunction with PHP. The test authors decided that, rather than relying on assumptions as to what other technologies a PHP programmer is likely to use in his or her daily job, the exam should focus on PHP itself and on those topics that a developer deals with often without any ties to a particular product.
Thus, although you will probably encounter one or more questions about database development during your exam, they will not be linked to a particular DBMS, such as MySQL or Oracle. Rather, they will deal with the general concepts of database programming and the standard SQL language.
