Passed SCBCD with 87%

[Ashish Sarin]

Hello,
My two cents:
I cleared the SCBCD exam with 87% today and my personal thoughts are that one should go after EJB specs and no other books. The questions in the real exam seems to have got little better than the Beta. The drag and drop problem (out of system resources problem) still occurs so make sure that you are using a good computer when taking the exam. I couldn't attend 5 drag and drop questions that was the reason i couldn't score enough so ensure that you guys don't end up working on the exam over and over again. There is no way in which drag and drop problem can fixed while you are taking the exam. The chances are high that u will have start again from the very first question again.
About the questions: I don't think there is any question that can be called TOUGH. But to my surprise i saw questions that had some links to the 'Support and Interoperability' chapter in EJB spec. The questions were OK OK, none of the questions were tricky. I don't have alot of experience in EJB but yes i have coded a few hundred EJBs till date, still i found the exam that doesn't require any coding knowledge. Coding will give you better understanding of the EJBs but i don't think that it is required at all.
About preparing for the exam: For those who don't have any previous EJB experience can start with J2EE 1.3 tutorial, in this tutorial earlier in the beginning itself it explains about all the enterprise beans, coding and running enterprise beans, enterprise bean's features which will help you to get big picture of EJBs and after that you can jump on the EJB 2.0 specs.
Time required for preparation: I guess one month will be enough to score good in the exam. I mean even if you start reading what EJBs are from today, the you can comfortably clear the exam in one month.
Exam Simulators: No comments. I don't have any experience of exam simulators. But may be this time i will get an opportunity to use have a look on simulators from SoftLearn Systems and Whizlabs ;-)
regards,
ashish sarin
scjp2,scjd2,scwcd,scbcd,scea(part i),ibm certified solution developer - xml & related technologies

[Pradeep bhatt]

Congrats hero!
Some questions
1. Why did you take real exam when you passed beta?
2. You got the drag n drop problem! Sorry to hear that dude. Was the OS windows 98?
When is the party for javaranchers?

[Ashik Uzzaman]

Congrats Ashish, carry on!

[Valentin Crettaz]

Nice shot Ashish
Moving this to the results forum. Please continue the discussion there. Thank you

[Ashish Sarin]

Thanks Pradeep,
I took the real exam because my score in Beta wasn't good. Last time when i took the beta exam I had spent just 3-4 days reading the spec. This time atleast i spent more than 10 days to read the spec. Last time i wasn't well therefore i couldn't properly take the exam. The day before the Beta exam i wasn't well and could hardly get sleep of 1 hr thats why i wasn't able to concentrate in reading the questions when i was taking the beta exam.
This time atleast i was able to read the questions. I am happy that this time i was a little bit accurate in answering questions with only 4 questions wrong (5 left out because of out of resource error)
I guess the Windows OS was 98. For others it would be better to ensure before hand that the latest machines are being used on which u are taking the exam. I did ask the Prometric person to save the exam so that i can start the exam again. But i was told that i may have to start all over again from the first question. I didn't wanted to waste my one hr time thats y i decided to take the risk of not answering drag and drop questions. Some people said before that keyboard can be used to navigate even if the 'out of resource error' is thrown. But in my case even the complete question wasn't coming on the screen.

regards,
ashish sarin

[Ashish Sarin]

Thanks Ashik, Valentine
regards
ashish sarin

[Pradeep bhatt]

Did you take javaranchers to party?

[Ashish Sarin]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I would love to take ranchers for the party. Anyone from Delhi- India ??
regards
ashish sarin