Direction to SCEA

[Anna Hays]

Hi, can anyone tell me what are ther equirements for SCEA please? I am certified in SCJP and interested in SCEA and not sure which one I should do next in order to get to SCEA. Sun's website doesn't say any requirements, but SCEA sounds too hard for a person with SCJP only.
Any feed back or a link to some FAQ page (where is that for this forum??) will be awsome.
Thank you very much!

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Anna,
Welcome to JavaRanch.
There are no prerequisites for the SCEA certification. This is because SCEA certification is aimed at different people than the other Java certifications offered by Sun. All the other Java certifications are designed for programmers and/or developers - the people who actually do the coding. The SCEA certification is designed for architects: those who write up the specifications that the programmers use.
Of course there is nothing to stop you going for all the Java certifications, and if you are in the process of transitioning from being a developer to being an architect, then getting both the certifications in the programming stream and the certification in the architect stream will be very good for you.
I would not recommend SCEA for someone who has just come out of school or someone who is still a junior programmer: it may very well be too difficult for them. They certainly wont have the industry experience that is needed to be a good architect, and it may confuse potential employers. Having said that though, there have been several people recently who passed SCEA without having much industry knowledge.
Normally the page which shows the list of active topics for each forum also has links to a FAQ page or a Links page just above the list of topics. For this forum, we have the following line just above the list of topics:

Please post your Exam Results in the Sun Certification Results forum | SCEA Links Page

(I have a new year's resolution: I am going to update that links page!)
Regards, Andrew

[Ronnie Phelps]

Would a person with 5 years of developement experience be considered as someone who just came out of school or someone that doesn't have enough experience?

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Ronnie,
You are starting to get into a grey area. That "5 years experience" can cover everything from:

being one small developer in a very large team where all you ever worked on was one small part of one small application, through

being a contractor working on many different projects / architectures

Probably the best thing for you to do is to look at the SCEA Exam Objectives and see if you are comfortable with all the concepts / technologies (not necessarily at a coding level, but at least know what everything is for and what it can do). Also decide for yourself whether you are comfortable with taking a loosely defined specification and a few UML diagrams and designing a J2EE application which will meet the specifications, and drawing the UML diagrams to go with that.
If you feel comfortable ... go for it.
The SCEA certification is staged - you cannot get the assignment until after you have passed the multi choice question. Most countries allow you to purchase the individual sections separately as well. So you can concentrate on the multi choice exam first, and when you are comfortable, buy the exam voucher and sit the exam. When you have passed the exam, purchase your assignment, and take as long as you like to work on it (there is no time limit). Then when your are confident with your solution, submit it and purchase an exam voucher.
If you do it that way you should not hit any time limits. There is a time limit on the vouchers for each of the two exams, but if you only purchase those vouchers just before you sit the exams you should not have to worry about time. There is no time limit on the assignment itself.
Regards, Andrew

[Vishwa Kumba]

Thanks Andrew...

-Vish