We have a long awaited announcement to make: Vaadin 7 developer certification is finally live at vaadin.com. Starting from today, you can validate your Vaadin 7 skills by taking an online exam through the Vaadin Pro Account. Vaadin certification helps you communicate the skills and expertise in Java web development with Vaadin and as it says officially: “As a Vaadin 7 Certified developer you should have the skills and knowledge to quickly build and deploy web applications to any Java EE application server using Vaadin technology.”
The exam itself is a multiple choice question test, and you have to get 60% right in order to pass it. Once successfully passed the exam, you will be awarded a certificate to show others the level of your expertise in Vaadin 7. For those already building Vaadin 7 applications, it should be no problem to pass the exam. And in case you fail the first time you can retake the exam after 30 days of more experience.
Final exams for the Vaadin Trainings
At the same time we are introducing final exams for the official Fundamentals and Advanced Vaadin trainings. They run in the same exam system and like the certification exam, the Vaadin Trainings final exams are time limited and consist of multiple choice questions. They are just a little shorter and focus on the training content.
Knowledge base end-of-life
Overall, we want that people build good web applications with Vaadin. This is why introducing the online developer certification is actually a more profound change in Vaadin expertise management. In the future, we are focusing on certification quality and at the same time ending the Vaadin Knowledge Base service in Pro Account.
Our open-source forum has always been a good channel for sharing information and while the community grows, it is getting better and better. We want to encourage this and allow those who want to be professional Vaadin developers to have better ways of showing it.
The Knowledge Base is still available until the end of 2013, but after that we will not be maintaining it any more.
Prepare for the certification exam
So what should you do to prepare for the certification?
Most importantly, the certification is based on the Book of Vaadin and therefore it is best to start with. Learn the basic concepts of Vaadin and try to learn how the component architecture works.
Further, our official trainings are a very good way to concentrate on the topic and to learn most of the things needed for certification. You are not required to attend a training before certification, but as you know, hands-on sessions are a quick way to learn something. Check the training schedule for nearby training sessions.
The final step is to get yourself a Vaadin Pro Account. You cannot take the certification exam with an evaluation account, so you must have at least one month of active subscription. To help you get certified we are now offering the certification together with 6 months of Pro Account subscription for $300 using the discount code "MAYCERT". The code is valid for two weeks, but after that you still have plenty of time to take the certification exam.
Join us for a certification webinar
Next week we are also going to arrange a webinar on Vaadin Certification. It is intended to help you understand how to take the exam and how to prepare for it. And maybe give you some tips on how to really pass it. This is 30th of May at 15.00 CEST. Enroll here.