Thanks, guys. As promised, I am a listing a few things that I think will be useful to the folks who are yet to take the test. I am mentioning them only from the point of view of the test.
General stuff:
1. Buy the voucher first before you start the prep. Putting some money down always makes me act. You can always reschedule the date if you are not ready.
2. Think like an architect during the prep. Skip through the code examples and excessive details. There are many architects in IT without a programming background. Remember there is no pre-req for the test.
3. Understand how the pieces link together. Get the big picture.
4. You don't need to cram through multiple books for the same subject. Either use the Monson-Haefel book or Ed Roman.
5. As far as possible buy books written by authoritative sources. Get Eric Gamma and all for Design
patterns and Booch and co for UML. This way you get to hear the original thoughts right from the horse's mouth. I saw a book called design patterns in
Java by some author. In my opinion, the book sucked big time. The author was so fixated on Swing and GUI, that he painted a wrong picture on design patterns.
6. A lot of folks have good things to say about
J2EE blueprints. For some reason I didn't find it useful. Again, use those resources that you are comfortable with.
Ok...about the test
1. The test focusses on high level aspects of the concepts. No details
2. Understand the intent of the patterns. Some of the questions on patterns were very good. The thing with patterns is that some of them have identical structures and very similar implementations but vary in their intents. So, know the intent very well.
3.UML was cool. Don't dig into advanced notations.
You should be able to identify what type of a UML diagram it is when you see one. Focus on aspects of simple class relationships like dependency, aggregation, composition, multiplicity, etc.
4. Know
applets security. I lost a couple of questions on that I think. I was never able to find a good resource on applets security and Java's policy based security for applets.
5. Protocols -> Used John's notes for JRMPO. There is a whole bunch of introductory articles in the net on SSL and HTTP. Pick one of them that the search engine throws at you. That should suffice. Details are not important. Netscape.com has a good one on SSL.
6. Monson-Haefel minus the details was good enuff. I didn't even look at the EJB specs.
7. Know some trends in the industry. The test required you to know something about B2B.
8. I was surprised to find some questions very similar to the ones that I had posted in my 'Mock Questions' page esp on the scenario based ones where you are required to find the best technology for a particular requirement.
9. Legacy, JRMP, I18n - > John's notes. I didn't need any additional resource besides this.
Thanks, John. Your notes are great! I found them very useful to recap the concepts before the day of the test.
10. There was one really intersting question... again a scenario based quesion. It was a very practical question where you are required to make a decision that will break the EJB model in order to satisfy a requirement. So, be prepared to look beyond the concepts
Thatz all I can think of at this point. I may have missed some resources. You got to gauge where you are at and make your own charter and gather those resources that you find good, which may contradict popular opinion.
-Sridhar-
[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Sridhar Raman001 ]