Curiosity on a Book

[Theodore Casser]

I'm considering going for the SCEA certification in the near future, but I noticed Sun has now apparently put out a study guide for the exam. Is anyone using it to prepare currently? And what are folks impressions of the book?
(For those who haven't seen it, it can be found at this link)

[Nicky Moelholm]

Hi,
The book is fine. But, as has been writte before in this forum, it is only a study guide. Thus you should use it for review and for guidance throughout the study.
My own impression is that it is relatively superficial in the areas of: legacy systems, uml and design patterns. You should refer to other material for the latter topics (UML Destilled, the GoF book and the Monson-Haefel book). Topics I find beneficial from the book is the Security and internationalization chapters.

[andy armstrong]

The book is terrible. It is a waste of money.
It misses whole objectives as well as missing whole topics. Mark Cade should be disgraced for
allowing his name to be associated with this "study guide" The best guides are
http://www.javaranch.com/scealinks.jsp
and the scea in a nutshell on the yahoo group
for j2ee architecture.
Basically Order of reading:
EJB 1.1 Specs
Haefel Book
UML Design, Learn all the diagrams.
GOF Design Patterns Book + another DP book for
good measure.
Hit the Firewall notes from websites above
Hit the Legacy Connectivity websites above
Hit the security tutorial on Sun
Hit the Internationalization tutorial on sun
Do all the mock exams you can find..
Jawarski
IBM ICe
JWhiz
Ians..
Sun EJB quiz..
another good one which I forget ..
When you get something wrong go to the book
that tells you the answer and figure out why the
answer was wrong.
Now go to all the review notes from the architects.
Review the sunobjectives
Do mock exams again..
Get over 90% on all the mock exams
Go write part I and you will pass with flying
colors.

[Sanjay Raghavan]

Good summary of how to approach the test. Another thing to add to that would be the JMS section from the J2EE Tutorial.
I agree with the Andy in that the study guide is not comprehensive. But then it shouldn't be as well. If we could all read a tiny book and pass, then there wouldn't be any value to SCEA. It should only be used as a roadmap for the topics.
Also as others have pointed out, there isn't any coverage on Legacy Connectivity (about 5 questions on the exam) and the security section is quite vague.
However what's good about the book is the scenario type questions. More than half the questions on the exam will be fairly lengthy. Many scenario questions would be a good 4-5 lines long at least. The study guide introduces you to those kinds of questions. There is as yet no other resource on the internet or elsewhere that gives you a good taste of such questions. From that point of view, you may want to check it out.

[andy armstrong]

TOTALLY Forgot about jms..
Yes do the tuturial on JSM
and read the
Wileys' book Master EJB's..
It seems to be concise and to the point..