Hi All,
I had my SCEA5 part 1 yesterday, and 11:31AM was one of the best moments when I saw 78% on the score report!!! I really owe a lot to this forum as it kept up my spirits alive and boosted my
confidence every time i started to slack!!! It helped me go that extra mile!!
My background in IT
1. 5yrs in Java/J2EE, Oracle, DB2.
2. Worked majorly on custom MVC architetures (no
Struts,
JSF,
EJB, WS, JPA etc). Some JMS and XML processing.
3. Performance tuning!!
Because of my weak background in majority of the J2EE technology, I had to put in a lot of effort to learn them in the midst of hectic work!!
And everytime I lost hopes, the Success stories in this forum boosted my confidence!!
My preparation experience
1. Started my preparation in May which went on for 5 long months!!I had to put in around 2hrs a day on weekdays and 4-6hrs on weekends
2. Study meterial
a. EJB in Action , Manning - Excellent resource for both advanced and novices.
b.
Java EE tutorial by Sun
c. Developing Java Web Services: Architecting and Developing Secure Web Services Using Java - by Ramesh Nagappan, Robert Skoczylas, Rima Patel Sriganesh: Another good book for understanding Webservices. It was helpful for me because I was new to this. If you have hands on experience Use J2EE tutorial!!
d. Core J2EE
Patterns: Amazing book even from a reading perspective.
e. Design Patterns, Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software (GoF): Another great book
f. Java 2 Network Security, by Marco Pistoia, Duane F. Reller, Deepak Gupta, Milind Nagnur, Ashok K. Ramani- Topics are not very relevant to JEE. I would not really go through this book.
g. Core Security Patterns: Best Practices and Strategies for J2EE, Web Services, and Identity Managemen- A very nice book for security module.
h.
SCEA for J2EE Study guide by Mark Cade: I read this last and so it provided a good refreshing!!
i. IT Architectures and Middleware: Strategies for Building Large, Integrated Systems by Chris Britton : A nice book to read. Gives general concept if you dont have a real "architect" experience
j.
Applet Security FAQ from sun:
http://java.sun.com/sfaq/ k. Web Start security
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/WebServices/JWS_2/JWS_White_Paper.pdf l. Wikipedia for lot of general reading like Load Balancing, reverse proxy, security threats(XSS, SQL Injection etc)
m. EJB3, JMS, JTA, JCA, JAX-WS, JAXB specs
n.
http://java.boot.by/scea5-guide/ by Mikalai Zaikin (Thanks a lot for these excellent notes:-)).. Some questions did come from Chatper 1 :-)
o. Lots of articles from TheServerSide.com and Java World.
3. Mock Exams:
1. Whizlabs : Pretty close to the actual exam (although actual is tougher and tests you in many areas) and also gives a good undertsanding of your major weakness!!
However it still has a few old SCEA realted questions. Would definitely recommend this.
2. Sun's ePractice: A little expensive for the price and is too easy comepared to the actual exam.
The Day
1. Most questions are scenario based. Some are lengthy, some small.But they really
test your analytical skills!! Get ready to put your thinking caps on!!
SCEA exam setters will not give it to you...They will make you work hard for it!!! :-)
2. I had lots of questions on Web Tier technology(majorly JSF)
3. Less than Expected in Design Patterns
4. Many questions on common architectures - 1,2,3,n tiers
5. Few direct questions on Web Services
6. Very few questions on EJB3/JPA
7. Many questions on general security.
Hope this helps!!!
Now I am moving on to part 2 & 3...!!!
Regards
Ashwin