Passed SCEA with 98%

[D. Thang Vu]

Hi all,

I feel very happy today to see my result for part II & III:

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition Technology Part II (310-061)
Date Taken: 2004-10-31 09:47:19.390
Grade: P
Score: 98
Comment: This report shows the total points that could have been awarded in each section and the actual amount of points you were awarded. This information is provided in order to give you feedback on your relative strengths on a section basis. The maximum number of points you could have received is 100, minimum to pass is 70. Class Diagram (44 maximum) .......................... 43 Component Diagram (44 maximum) ...................... 44 Sequence/Colloboration Diagrams (12 maximum) ........ 11



This was indeed a long and awful process for me. It took me about 1.5 years to be certified! I started preparing for the certification in May 2003. I passed step 1 so far in Aug 2003, but I could manage to complete step 2 only in Sep this year due to my busy work. I uploaded the assignment on Sep 13 and I had to wait 2 weeks before taking step 3 because of seat unavailability at local Prometric center. So, I took part 3 on Sep 25. I was waiting for my result till Oct 27, I emailed SunCert to ask if my assignment was graded. They answered that my assignment was sent to the assessors on Sep 29 and I should wait until Oct 29 for the grade. However, I did not see my grade on Oct 29 (Friday) and I emailed SunCert again. They replied that my assignment has not been graded yet and they had escalated the issue to Program Manager for resolution! This morning, Nov 1, I checked assignment watcher database and I saw my result posted on Oct 31 (Sunday). Well, I feel big relief now! Actually, I would agree with a passing score, I did not expect that I could get such high score because of uncertainties in the assignment and I did make a number of assumptions. Now, I feel satisfied myself as I have managed to get high scores for 3 steps (100% for step 1) .

I would like to share with you some of my thoughts regarding the assignment. As I lost only 2 marks, I think almost the assumptions I made were accepted. So, you can make assumptions as long as you can justify your decisions. I think I lost 1 mark in the class diagram because of some relationship(s) between objects. A few of my sequence diagrams were complicated; maybe I made some mistakes there.
I had 1 class diagram, 1 component diagram and 10 sequence diagrams. I had 1 sequence diagram for each use case; 2 for login of web customers and travel agents; 2 for interaction flow of web & swing applications so the other sequence diagrams are shown in client-neutral manner. My class diagram consisted of about 20 classes and it was technology-independent. I did use notations to show session beans that control business logic. I also described how the 2 types of clients are supported. I described design patterns in the component diagram. To avoid cluttering, I drew only major classes in sequence diagrams.
My documentation was quite well organized. Beside the diagrams, my documentation consisted of Assumptions, High-level Design Choices and Application Architecture sections. In Assumptions section, I described the terminology (segment, flight, leg, etc.) and the assumptions for travel agents, use cases and other functionalities that I considered in or out of scope. In High-level Design Choices I explained and justified architectural decisions made to the system: the framework, local/distributed architecture, web & swing applications, session state, synchronous/asynchronous communications, connections to legacy systems, security, CMP-CMR, etc. Finally, in the Application Architecture section I described applied J2EE patterns and the system modules.
My architecture was based on PetStore. I mentioned that I modified the WAF to support distributed architecture. I utilized popular J2EE design patterns to decouple UI & business logic tiers to facilitate different client types. To present the diagrams, I followed Mark Cade's book.
In general, I found the assignment is really hard. I had 5-year J2EE experience, mostly with stateless & message-driven services, and I had to study a lot to complete my assignment.

Great thanks to you guys all for your very useful postings and guidelines.

D.Thang

[Luca Vent]

Hello D. Thang Vu,

First of all...congratulations for your great score in scea certification!!!

Can you give me some explanation about the assignment, please? I can't go on developing my project because I have understood some things...I have posted all my doubts in topic "HELP: travel agents and new java application":

https://coderanch.com/t/152828/java-Architect-SCEA/certification/HELP-travel-agents-new-java

Can you help me please?

Thanks a lot in advance!!

Luca

[Ramon Gill]

Congrats ... great score.

Ray

[Billy Tsai]

congratulations that was indeed a long wait, usually it shouldn't take more than 1 month for the result to be released.

[Senthil Rajendran]

Hi,

Congrats.

I would appreciate a lot if you can give some clarifications for my below raised questions

1. For sequence diagrams did you show the web tier (controller, business delegate, service locator etc) ?

2. Did you model the pre coditions & post conditions in all the sequence diagrams ?

3. Change Itenary again executes Prepare Itenary, should this be shown in the sequence diagram ?

4. What Frame Work did you use ?

Thanks in Advance,

Senthil

[D. Thang Vu]

Originally posted by Senthil Rajendran:
Hi,

Congrats.

I would appreciate a lot if you can give some clarifications for my below raised questions

1. For sequence diagrams did you show the web tier (controller, business delegate, service locator etc) ?

2. Did you model the pre coditions & post conditions in all the sequence diagrams ?

3. Change Itenary again executes Prepare Itenary, should this be shown in the sequence diagram ?

4. What Frame Work did you use ?

Thanks in Advance,

Senthil

Hi Senthil,

To your questions

1. I had 2 diagrams to show interaction between client tier and business tier in processing user requests. In these diagrams, I used an actor to represent the client (Web/JSP or Java app) that interacts with client tier controller and business tier controller. Other related classes like request processor, business delegates, actions, etc. are also shown here.
The diagrams that depict business use cases are presented in client-neutral manner. I showed the flow only from business tier controller. I didn't show service locator and supporting classes like value objects etc. in any sequence diagram. I tried to keep the diagrams simple & readable.

2. Pre- & post-conditions for the use case are described in story board attached to each sequence diagram. Within the diagram, I used notes to explain various conditions like if-else, loops, etc. I didn't try to use special UML notations to describe these stuff because they may clutter the diagram easily without adding significant efficiency.

3. After the last method call in Change Itinerary use case, I attached a note saying that Prepare Itinerary use case is executed subsequently. The same for some other use cases.

4. I used WAF from PetStore with modifications to support my architecture.

Cheers,

Thang

[Senthil Rajendran]

Hi Thang,

Thanks a lot for the information. I need bit more of light on sequence diagrams please

1. were both your clients (Web&Swing) interacting with Business/Application Controller. Did you use business delegate pattern

2. How did you depict Web Actions & EJB Actions ?

3. Did you have a Servlet controller for Swing App ?

4. Can you also throw some light on component diagram ?

Thanks a lot,

Senthil.

[Alvin Tang]

I want to ask you a few questions:
1 Do you mind to tell me how do you access the Frequent Flyer mileage system? Did you use screen scrapper?
2. Do you use EJB1.1 or EJB2.0
3. How do you access the database, DAO or Entity bean?

Thanks very much.

[D. Thang Vu]

Originally posted by Senthil Rajendran:
Hi Thang,

Thanks a lot for the information. I need bit more of light on sequence diagrams please

1. were both your clients (Web&Swing) interacting with Business/Application Controller. Did you use business delegate pattern

2. How did you depict Web Actions & EJB Actions ?

3. Did you have a Servlet controller for Swing App ?

4. Can you also throw some light on component diagram ?

Thanks a lot,

Senthil.

Hi Senthil,
1, 2, 3. I used business delegate pattern with a common controller for business logic tier. It's your decision of how to process UI events for different client types. You may apply a protocol router with different client controllers, or to use separate access to business logic tier for web & java clients.
4. Component diagram is a "translation" of class diagram into Java/J2EE language with concrete components (entity beans, session beans, DAO, VO, etc.) with applied patterns (service locator, business delegate, etc.). To avoid cluttering, I showed only architectural-significant classes.

Cheers,

Thang

[D. Thang Vu]

Originally posted by Alvin Tang:
I want to ask you a few questions:
1 Do you mind to tell me how do you access the Frequent Flyer mileage system? Did you use screen scrapper?
2. Do you use EJB1.1 or EJB2.0
3. How do you access the database, DAO or Entity bean?

Thanks very much.

Hi Alvin,
1. FFM system is based on Perl/CGI with Oracle database. You may decide to interact with it via it's HTTP interface or to access Oracle DB directly. You can find the appropriate solution and justify it based on functional & non-functional requirements to the system.
2. I used EJB 2.0.
3. I used both Entity beans & DAO classes for different purposes.

Cheers,

Thang