If you've been considering taking the Zend Certified Engineer exam for PHP 5.3 but want to be sure you know what you need to pass, take a look at this new post to the Zend Developer Zone with some helpful hints on the topics the test covers.

According to Zend , the exam covers the following topics: PHP Basics, Functions, Data Format & Types, Web Features, Object Oriented Programming, Security, I/O, Strings and Patterns, Databases and Arrays. I will detail each topic as to what you should expect at the exam, however I will first tell you some basic information about the exam. Then I will tell you about the three most important changes of PHP 5.3 and another new feature I find very useful.

He starts with a few of the basics of the exam (how many questions, his testing strategy, the number of fill-in-the-blank questions) before moving into each of the topics. It's not an exhaustive description of each, but it gives you a good idea of where to start when studying. There's lots of links to resources for each that'll take you to some great places to learn in more detail.