Alex Netkachov has written up some of his experience with the Zend Certification Exam in a recent post to his blog:

Zend Certification is an important step for a PHP developer. It is a very good chance to evaluate your skills, show your experience to your co-workers and potential customers.

He points out Zend's resource for all things ZCE, using the ZCE Yellow Pages to find others in your area and the process he went through to prepare for and take the exam. Oh, and in case you're wondering - yes, he passed.

For those out there that have complained that the Zend Certification Exam is just "so PHP4", you might want to check out what's coming up from Zend.

Two years after launching the industry standard for PHP Certifications and certifying over 1,300 engineers, Zend has once again teamed with a group of leading PHP experts to bring you the "Zend PHP 5 Certification" exam.

Topics that will be covered by this new exam will include:

• PHP Basics - syntax, constants, control structures
• XML and Web Services - SimpleXML, XPath, SOAP
• Functions, Arrays, Strings, Pattern Matching
• Design and Theory
• Streams and Network Programming

and much, much more. So, keep an eye out for Zend's announcement of the new exam's release. We'll post it here as well.