Hi paul,
The SCEA requires no prior certifications. I can attest to that since I was mistakingly told that the
SCJP was required and it is not. The Developer cert is a ggod cert if you need to prove to a prospective employer that you can code a Java project but it will not help you with the SCEA. The first part of the SCEA is a multiple choice question exam. This can be adequately prepared for by using Cades, and Allan/Bamabera's study guides for the SCEA. Practice exams abound and check out the Yahoo group dedicated to the cert. ( I don't know the URL off the top of my head but it is listed in this group's mail somewhere )
I have taken part 1 and the questions on the real exam give you the number of correct answers expected. The mock exams don't. The mock exams are generally harder than the real thing. Scenario questions (
word problems) are the most frequent question on the exam. many of the mocks don't have any of these. See the SCEA resource page in this news group and then load Jarowski's
test to see a true sampling of questions. But that mock doesn't give the number of expected answers either which makes it harder! If you can get above 80% on Jaworski's mock test without help you can pass the real thing.
Part 2 requires more patterns, UML, and OO design. If you are experienced in this already go for it. Developing code will not help here since the second part of the SCEA is a high level software architecture design....no coding expected.
Noel
SCJP, SCWCD
