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Tips for SCEA part I

 
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Hello All,
I have just got back from the Prometrics test site having passed the SCEA part I exam. Thanks to all contributors to this forum for their valuable contributions. I felt that it might be appropriate to respond in kind, and pass on some tips whilst the exam is fresh in my mind.
i) The exam was 48 multiple choice questions which the candidate is given 75 minutes to complete. There were *no* free form questions. In those cases where there was more than one correct answer the exam tells you (very handy). Curiously the exam commenced with a survey which asked questions pertaining to the candidate's experience with J2EE (I don't know if this had any bearing on the complexity of the exam which followed :-)
ii) The exam is far more general than I was expecting. Questions pertaining to EJB technology were far less technical than the IBM ICE exam 483. A few people have alluded to the O'Reilly EJB book as required reading, however I feel that this book is much more detailed than the exam requires, despite it being an excellent resource. I would suggest that the Sun J2EE tutorial is adequate.
iii) At least two questions involved DNS round robin. I can recommend the O'Reilly DNS & BIND book for info on this topic.
iv) There were a few simple UML questions (UML Distilled by Fowler will get you across the line if you're rusty), and I would estimate three to four questions related to the GoF Design Patterns (again pretty simple).
v) At least four to five questions related to legacy enterprise integration (e.g. screen scraping, third party MoM ...etc).
vi) Read the longer worded questions *carefully* as they are worded in such a way that if you scan them quickly you might be inclined to pick the wrong answers.
vii) I went through the exam in sequence which may have not been the best approach because the first couple of questions had me a bit bogged down to start with.
viii) A handful of the questions seemed to be based on material covered in the Sun J2EE Architecture training course 425, so getting the course notes, or attending the training may be a good idea.
In terms of time I finished with about 15 to 20 minutes to spare, however this did not prove long enough to review all my answers (there were a handful of answers which were I needed to review).
Thanks and regards,
Andrew
 
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Congrats !!
and thanks for your feedback..that will certainly help all.
Deepak.
 
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thanks for these informations.
After reading all success passed exam , it is adviced to do not attend the SCEA exam if you don't have any knowledge with the following topics :
- know very well EJB ( lifecycle, container model...)
- UML : class/sequence diagrams at least
- Internationalization ( always 2 questions)
- Applet Security ( sandbox, class loader, certificats) always 2-4 questions
- Port/Protocols
- Design Patterns and related java objects
- Transaction : attributs , isolation levels
others topics : firewalls, load balancing, clustering, DND round robin, B2B, code refactoring, increase performance (scalability, maintainabilty)....
herve attia
 
Deepak Shah
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Congrats !!
and thanks for your feedback..that will certainly help all.
Deepak.
 
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Hi...
Congrats..
Can u pls tell us what type of questions were asked on UML and DEsign Patterns...
Vidya
 
Andrew Tyson
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Hi,
There were at least three questions which asked you to descibe which Gang of Four pattern matched a particular Java class or concept. There was one general question which related to the benefits/disadvantages of patterns. If you know the common creational, structural and behavioral patterns as per the GoF book (IMHO *mandatory* reading for all designers and architects) you'll be fine.
The UML questions were simple. There was one which textually described the relationship between two classes, and you had to pick the UML diagram which best matched that description. Another question asked you to pick the correct statements with respect to a sequence diagram.
I think that I only got one I18N question in the exam. There were no questions about various services' well known ports in my exam.
Thanks and regards,
Andrew
[This message has been edited by Andrew Tyson (edited October 08, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Andrew Tyson (edited October 08, 2001).]
 
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Congrats Andrew.
Best Of Luk for Part II.
Regards,
java poirot
 
Iyengar Srividya76
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Hi...
What material did u refer for protocols and security...
Thanx again,
Vidya
 
Andrew Tyson
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Hi,
I didn't actually get any explicit protocol questions, however most people seem to allude to the following;
HTTP 80
HTTPS 443
IIOP 535 (??)
RMI(JRMP) 1099
I did get a couple of questions which described a scenario where some legacy service was sitting behind a firewall which only permitted HTTP(S) traffic, and asked how the legacy service might be exposed.
In terms of security you can get a good overview of SSL and Public Key Cryptography at the Netscape site, check out;
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/security/sslin/contents.htm
If you're really keen 'Java Cryptography' by O'Reilly gives a good coverage of the Java 2 cryptographic stuff especially the keystore, and the keytool. It also discusses the Java Cryprographic Extension (JCE) and US Export restrictions (although these have now been relaxed I believe). At least a couple of the questions in my exam related to keystores and digital certificates.
Thanks and regards,
Andrew
 
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Hi Andrew,
You posted that, getting the notes of Sun J2EE Architecture training course 425 is a good idea. Just wondering whether you have the ocurse notes. If yes, whether its possible to send the notes to my mail address "ramdhan.kotamaraja@bellsouth.com"
Thanks,
Ramdhan YK
 
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Hi Andrew,
I am also interested in the course. Please send me the notes to my mail address "ruilin.yang@orica.com"
Thanks,
Ruilin
 
Iyengar Srividya76
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Hi andrew...
can u send me the notes too... thanx for the protocol information... do we need to have indepth knowledge of digital certificates and stuff or just an overview of it...
thanx again.
vidya
 
Andrew Tyson
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Hi,
To all those who have asked for the course notes,unfortunately I only have a hard copy of the notes ...
Thanks and regards,
Andrew
 
Oh, sure, you could do that. Or you could eat some pie. While reading this tiny ad:
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