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Passed Part I

 
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Hi,
Well I just passed part I of the SCEA an hour ago and wanted to write down some impressions/suggestions.
Please do not ask me to tell you about specific questions on the test.
1) Know EJBs really well (no duh, huh?) to a very detailed level. Understand how the different components of a bean react to events and perform their functions. I'd recommend reading all of the Enterprise JavaBeans book (from O'reilly) except for the first and last chapters and chapters 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 of the EJB 1.1 spec.
2) Know UML diagrams reasonably well. I'd say this means knowing the difference between the generalization and realization symbols - stuff like that. UML Distilled by Fowler should suffice.
3) Know your patterns! Know all the pattern names, know what they are used for, and know how parts of J2EE use patterns. The Design Patterns book will give you most of this.
4) Know the details of the protocols mentioned in the objectives. Know what they do, what they are good/bad for, their mechanics, how they interact with firewalls (where is that mentioned in the objectives?).
5) Know the details of Applet related security.
6) For questions with multiple answers the test tells you how many correct answers there are. This made things much easier.
7) There are some things that are obvious holdovers from the old test. Not too many but I was a little surprised.
8) There are a few strangely/badly worded questions on the test. Don't let them rattle you. I think Sun needs to do another pass at editing the questions.
John
 
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Congratulatinos John.
I have recently started my preparation for this certification, and to date find the content much more interesting that the programmer stuff. A question I am hoping you can answer for me is whether or not you used any mock exams in your preparation that seemed to be of comparable difficulty to the real thing? Its difficult to study for an exam with no measuring sticks of your progress along the way.
Again congratulations, Cheers James
 
John Wetherbie
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James,
Thanks for jogging my memory. Knew I had forgotten something...
I did use a couple mock exams. There were two I took out at the IBM Certification Exam site. These were the Enterprise Connectivity (with J2EE) Test and the Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with UML Test. Registration is free and you can take them as meny times as you want as far as I can tell.
You might also check out brainbench. They are supposed to have a test or two that might apply.
You may also want to run through Jaworski's test. It was created for the old test but since there were questions that seemed to be holdovers it might help.
Does anyone else have resources they would recommend?
John
 
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Congrats Mr Wetherbie.
How much time did you spend to prepare for part I ?
I am having some problem. There are not many resources with which one can prepare for the exam. I have downloaded weblogic 5.1 and many of the examples in Oreilly book do not work on this appln server. Same is with Tom valesky book. And as far as this forum is concerned there are not many posts everyday unlike programmer's forum. May be the people taking up programmer's exam are more when compared to SCEA.
Hence I am finding it difficult to master EJB.
Please help. Thanks
 
John Wetherbie
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Hi,
Well, I probably took about a month to one-and-a-half months to get ready. Half the time was writing up my notes and the other half was going over them, reading the O'reilly EJB book over again, and taking some mock exams.
I would suggest reading the O'reilly EJB book cover-to-cover. It has the information and level of detail you need to know for the test.
I did have the luxury of being between projects at work so I could spend at least half my workday studying.
Do you have any suggestions on how to increase the traffic in this forum? Maybe people posting questions about the objectives listed by Sun would get more discussion going.
Anyone have any ideas?
John
 
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Congrat Mr. John
1000s of Thanks to God .You Don It.I realy happy after seen Your Success story .I got another Boost from your Words .
Best Wishes from Me for your II & III part.
Reagards
Bidyut
 
John Wetherbie
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Thanks for the kind words and wishes.
I hope I will see your's and other people's success stories, comments, discussions, tips, etc. in this forum.
John
 
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Hi John, Congratulations on earning your certification!
You mentioned that you had studied for about half-time (about 4 hours per day?), for about 1.5 months. But what kind of experience did you have with the technologies covered in the exam before you started studying? Did you already know quite a lot about EJBs, UML, design patterns? Or was it mostly new to you? I have some experience with all those things, but I still have quite a lot to learn about them. I'm trying to come up with a reasonable schedule for myself.
 
John Wetherbie
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I've been an architect for the past few years and knew UML and Design patterns pretty well. I knew the basics about EJBs but not the details so I really studied up an them. The other stuff I just tried to collect information from where I could. I didn't really focus on the other stuff too much and my score reflects it but I did pass with 79%.
Of J2EE I have the most hands on experience with JDBC, XML, JSPs, and Servlets so this wasn't a big impact from what I can tell. Just having been an architect for awhile seemed to be an advantage because I have dealt with the "how to we talk to this legacy system" situation a number of times.
John
 
Marya Doery
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Thanks; that gives me an idea of where you're coming from.
I posted this question on another page, but since you mentioned it: Are JSP/Servlets covered in the J2EE exam? I don't see any mention of them made on the objectives page at Sun (http://suned.sun.com/USA/certification/archobj.html). I was very surprised to see them go unmentioned!
 
John Wetherbie
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From what I can tell they are covered under Applicability of J2EE and Legacy Connectivity. You need to know what they are and how they can interact.
John
 
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Congratulations John! Where would you recommend learning more about legacy connectivity?
Thanks, Gina
 
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John , Where is Party ? All the very best for other two parts.
Your Freindly Bartender
Shailesh.
 
John Wetherbie
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Unfortunately I don't know of any resource that discusses legacy connectivity except maybe the J2EE Blueprints and Jaworski's book. Jaworski talks about screen scrapers and a few other b its and pieces. I pretty much went into the exam without much "book learning" on the subject.
John
 
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Congratulations John!!!
Good Show! Keep it up.
regards
 
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Congratulation John Wetherbie.
Good luck for the next part.
Is it possible for you to share your notes with us?
Faisal
 
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John,
Congrats. How do u find the test with real time experience except legacy connectivity. Is it theoritical oriented or exp. oriented?
 
John Wetherbie
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If you have experience it will definitely help but you can probably learn enough from reading, if you can find the resources, to pass.
As far as posting notes - I am not Mr. Organized Note Taker so my notes are a bit of a mess. Some, like EJBs, are not only a mess but quite long. If someone has suggestions on how to share them I'll see what I can do but I would urge you to do your own reading and create your own notes. You will have a much better understanding of the topic with this approach, at least in my opinion.
John
 
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Mr. John Congrats to U.
I found very helpful with the first part of the exam the folowing materials:
EJB 1.1 specification
I-planet AppServer 6.0 documentation.
Java Server Programming J2EE edition Wrox.
and the materials of SL-351, SL-425 and SL-410
courses of the Java Learning Path.
In fact, to become instructor of those courses SUN wanted
from me a 20% plus the minimum required to pass, but they are not enough to complete the certification.
Experience is neither enough because some questions are very conceptual.
I recomend some reading at the same time you practice with some exercises or examples, the J2EE RI could be more then enough for those who need some hands on experience.
 
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Hi! John,
I wanted to know that is going through UML distilled is enough for exam? Secondly are the ques. similar as IBM mock test?
shivani
 
John Wetherbie
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I think that UML Distilled is sufficient. While some of the IBM ICE tests will help in prep for the SCEA part 1 its hard to say whether the style of the questions is similar or not. I wouldn't depend on it.
John
 
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Congradulations John Wetherbie
This discussion is really helping me a lot, I am a Certified Java Developer, and I am really interested in giving Architect Exam. Currently I am working on EJB and learning UML from 'The Unified Modeling Language User Guide' Is this book as good as UML Distilled.
Thanx
 
John Wetherbie
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I can't really say how good the UML Users Guide book is because I haven't read it. I'm sure it covers everything you need to know for the exam, though. I liked UML Distilled because it was short and to the point.
If you have any doubts you may want to check the reviews of both books at amazon or fatbrain to see how they compare.
John
 
shivani anand
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Hi! John,
Only going through chapter 2,3 ,7 and 11 from O'reilly's EJB book is enough for SCJA part 1 exam.
Could you tell me about passivation little bit.
shivani
 
John Wetherbie
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I read chapters 2-8 and 10.
Passivation/activation applies to stateful session beans. When a bean is passivated its instance fields are written to storage. Once this is done the bean instance is removed from memory. A bean being passivated needs to close open resources. A bean instance can timeout while passivated. When the client invokes a method on the bean the instance will be activated. Needed resources will need to be acquired.
See pages 265-271 of Enterprise Javabeans (2nd Ed.) for a detailed discussion.
John
 
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Congrats John
I just passed my SCJP and want to prepare for the Architect Exam.
I would apprecite if you give some suggestions on available resources for the architect exam
Thank you
Venkat
 
John Wetherbie
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Venkat,
Check out this post. The thread has a link to a very good resource.
BTW, you may want to re-read the JavaRanch naming policy and re-register. (Its the underscore and I don't know if it will disqualify you for any giveaways, etc.)
John
 
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Hi john can tell what is the fee for the java architect exam?
is there any time limit?

how and when i can take the test
 
John Wetherbie
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In the US the fees are:
part 1 - $150
part 2 - $250
PART 3 - $150
When I purchased part 2 the person on the phone said I had a year to complete that portion from when I downloaded it. The Sun site doesn't mention a time limit.
Parts 1 & 3 are given at test centers. Part 2 is a project you do yourself. You should check the Sun Education website for info on test center locations.
John
 
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This is a great thread.
I am posting here, just so this moves to the top of the most recent pile.
Besides, I just passed part 1 Friday, so I am going to start my own thread with some notes, but I don't want to repeat all of the good stuff in here.
Skip
 
shailesh sonavadekar
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yes , Skip. this is great thread. John has taken tremendous efforts to put up his notes. Nice to hear from you that you are also putting your notes up. Great news.
Waiting for you thread.
Your Friendly Bartender
Shailesh.
 
Bidyut Padhi
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Oh John!
This thread is getting maximum posts.Which thread got the maximum number of posts as of today.
Your thread deservs it.
Bidyut
 
John Wetherbie
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It is a bit hard to figure out which thread gets the most hits on a particular day unless you look at the dates on the posts.
Glad everyone seems to like this thread.
John
 
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I enjoyed reading this history of commentary. I recently passed Programmer's and will begin preparation for Architect's while taking Developer's. Is this your recommended progression, John?
Programmer's ===> Developer's ===> Architect's
 
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