Hi Thomas,
I took BEA courses and used those materials for the cert. THis was easy for me as I work for BEA here in Brazil.
I believe its not easy to take this cert without taking the courses as its focused in BEA not general SOA understanding.
For WLS, I'd recommend you taking the WLS Certified Developer. Its an general cert about
JEE and WLS. Im gonna take WLI Developer and then WLS Cert Developer. Maybe we can prepare together.
If you are interested, please, send me an email daniel.amadei [at] gmail dot com
Good luck!
Daniel