Zend Certified Engineer
Encyclopedia
Professional certification (Computer technology)
Professional certifications in computer technology are non-degree awards made to those who have achieved qualifications specified by a certifying authority. Depending on the particular certification, qualifications may include completing a course of study, proof of professional accomplishments,...
is an internationally-recognized PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
certification established by Zend Technologies
Zend Technologies
Zend Technologies Ltd. is an Israeli world wide web infrastructure software company with headquarters in Cupertino, California, U.S., technology center in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, Israel and offices in France, Italy and Germany...
. An exam must be passed in order to be awarded the certification. It is intended to prove that a person is fully qualified to develop PHP web application
Web application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
s. Rates for PHP developers frequently run higher for those with Zend Certified Engineer certification.
There are almost 5,000 Zend Certified Engineers in the world with either PHP 4 or PHP 5 certifications. Zend's PHP 5 examination was introduced in August 2006, and the PHP 4 exam was retired in March 2007. The PHP 5.3 exam was introduced in the fall of 2010, although the 5.0 exam is still available to take. There is also a Zend Framework
Zend Framework
Zend Framework is an open source, object-oriented web application framework implemented in PHP 5 and licensed under the New BSD License.-Licensing:...
certification test available. All versions are mostly multiple choice examinations, although there are a few "fill in the blank" questions (generally asking about function names). The test currently has 70 questions (75 on the Zend Framework test) that must be answered in no more than 90 minutes. The pass/fail score is kept secret and at the exam's conclusion the test simply reports success or failure. Zend's PHP 5 exam costs US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
195 as of October 2011 and is offered exclusively at Pearson VUE
Pearson VUE
Pearson VUE is an electronic testing company owned by British media company Pearson PLC. Founded in 1994 by E. Clarke Porter as Virtual University Enterprises, the company now operates in 165 countries with more than 5,000 authorized test centres ....
testing sites.
To help Zend Certified Engineers gain exposure to potential employers, Zend lists all Zend Certified Engineers in its directory, Yellow Pages for PHP Professionals and allows ZCEs to join its exclusive LinkedIn
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
group. They also allow Zend Certified Engineers to place a ZCE logo on their personal web site and resume
Résumé
A résumé is a document used by individuals to present their background and skillsets. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons but most often to secure new employment. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education...
.
Exam topics
As PHP is mainly used as a web development language, the ZCE tests the candidate over a variety of skills necessary for developing web applications. The PHP 5 Certification exam covers:- PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
Basics - Functions
- Arrays
- Object-oriented programmingObject-oriented programmingObject-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
- Security, including Cross-site scripting (XSS)Cross-site scriptingCross-site scripting is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in Web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into Web pages viewed by other users. A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same...
and SQL injectionSQL injectionA SQL injection is often used to attack the security of a website by inputting SQL statements in a web form to get a badly designed website in order to dump the database content to the attacker. SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability in a website's software... - XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
and Web Services, including SimpleXMLSimpleXMLSimpleXML is a PHP extension that allows users to easily manipulate/use XML data. PHP 5+ is required.- Functions :* addAttribute* addChild* asXML* attributes* children* __construct...
, XpathXPathXPath is a language for selecting nodes from an XML document. In addition, XPath may be used to compute values from the content of an XML document...
, SOAPSOAPSOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...
, and RESTRepresentational State TransferRepresentational state transfer is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation... - Strings and patterns, including PCRE
- Databases and SQLSQLSQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
- Web Features, such as sessions, forms, GET and POST data, cookies, and HTTP headers
- Streams and Network Programming
- Differences between PHP 4 and 5
- Design and Theory
- Php.ini settings
Although these are the Study Guide contents, there are more topics to consider in order to be prepared for the exam, such as use of the new extension PHP Data Object (PDO) layer to access databases, and the Standard PHP Library (SPL), a new set of classes specially created to manipulate objects as sets of arrays or files.