What are the materials available during EX288?

[HebaAboulmagd]

Dear Sir,

I am planning to take EX288 exam remotely and I want to know what is the materials available to me during my exam.

I toke the courses: DO180 and DO288 and I toke my notes during my learning. Is it possible to have my notes and the courses material in PDF for DO180 and DO288 availabe during the exam to be able to remember the env variables like ${RHT_OCP4_WILDCARD_DOMAIN} and some paths in the commands like .dockerconfigjson=${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/containers/auth.json

Also, does the exam has MCQ questions or only lab section ?

Thanks in advance for your help

[iali · Accepted solution]

greetings;

I am afraid you can't have any sort of material - hard or soft copy - in the exam.

the only help that is provided during the exam is an OFFLINE copy of the redhat openshift documentation ( for example, if you are planning to have ex288 for openshift 4.5, the documentation will be like: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/openshift_container_platform/4.5/ )

you will not be needing to use any environment variable. however, for the path like ".dockerconfigjson=${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/containers/auth.json" you have to memorize it on your own or use the alternative create secret docker-registry with --docker-server= --docker-username and --docker-password

the exam consists of 7 hands-on labs, no MSQ questions exist (all practical)
please revie wthe exam objective to find out what is the scope of the exam.

good luck with your exam!

[tat]

For complex strings like ".dockerconfigjson=${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/containers/auth.json" you can either remember them or remember WHERE TO FIND THEM!
Most of them are either in the documentation (remember at least the chapter/subject and a good search string) or they can be found in things like "oc explain xxx --recursive" or in samples in the web-gui (afaik quota and networkpolicies eg have good samples in the web-gui, begging to be copied).

Your example can be found with "podman login -h"

[HebaAboulmagd]

I thought the exam only evaluates my knowledge and skills in Red Hat OpenShift Development and Containerizing Applications. But that is not the case when I entered the exam. It requires me to know programming language specific commands (like command to validate a file in a specific programming language, and how to run script for a specific language).
This is not similar to the labs in DO180 and DO288 courses, in which the commands that is not related to Red Hat OpenShift are mentioned in hints.
It is quite easy for me to know the language specific commands by a simple search in the internet but this is not available in the exam. So I think it is not fair to include them in the exam without hint as may be I am not experienced with this specific language but I am experienced with other languages that is not included in the exam.

[tat]

I just gave the ex288 a try and see where you are coming from.

However both situations mentioned did not need any programming language specific knowledge but could be solved by either using OC commands (and going carefully through its output! ;-) ) or looking through the relevant man pages of the mentioned programming language.

The later is explicitly stated on the Exam objectives page as:

"...You will not be required to modify application code however in some cases you may need to utilize supplied documentation in order to fully test and complete the deployment of a given application...."

That being said, the extra time this might cost somebody not familiar with things "around" the product (ocp in this case) is something I myself don't like with some exams. The exam should be JUST about the product. Any additional knowledge should help to speed up things, but not be required to pass. 

[Mostafa]

Hello Alexander, @Tats 

Are there man pages for programming languages? What are examples for man pages for various programming languages to illustrate the idea?

Thanks.

[dkcbk]

Hi.

Which programming language commands do we have to know?

[Marek_Czernek]

Hi Heba,

I have not taken the EX288 exam, but note that DO288 is focused on developer audiences. The training name is  Red Hat OpenShift Development II: Containerizing Applications (emphasis added by me).

The intended audience for the exam (from this page) is various developers.

We do take this seriously when creating DO288 (and currently, DO188 in early access) and we definitely target people who have developer experience (roughly 1-2 years of professional experience should suffice).

Perhaps you would be more suited to the DO280 training and its associated EX280 exam, which aims more at system administrators.

[Deanna]

Hi @HebaAboulmagd, thank you for the feedback - we will make sure to share this with our curriculum and exam team at Red Hat. Our curriculum and exam developers share new releases and updated courses/exams on our course announcements page, where you can also share feedback directly with that team.