SCEA: what about EJB?

[Alexander Ulmer]

Hi,
I'm interested to become SCEA but... there are some doubts I wanted to share with you.
In my current job (Java/J2EE developer, 4 year of experience (incl. EJB)) we develop J2EE/Web solutions on the basis of Spring and Hibernate. The EJB-Technology is out.
Looking at the SCEA track I've got the opinion that the SCEA exams have a definitive focus on EJB. The assignment (step 2) would be most probably a EJB-based solution.
The SCEA grad would definitive beautify my CV. But do I really need to spend my time learning the stuff and implementing solutions that (IMHO) are not effective any more?
Thank you in advance for your valuable answers,
Regrads,
Alexander Ulmer

[Goan Balchao]

Why not ? At the least, you'll get a perspective on things that you should NOT be doing

[Lucy Hummel]

Hi Alexander,

Originally posted by Alexander Ulmer:
Hi,
I'm interested to become SCEA but... there are some doubts I wanted to share with you.
In my current job (Java/J2EE developer, 4 year of experience (incl. EJB)) we develop J2EE/Web solutions on the basis of Spring and Hibernate. The EJB-Technology is out.
Looking at the SCEA track I've got the opinion that the SCEA exams have a definitive focus on EJB. The assignment (step 2) would be most probably a EJB-based solution.
The SCEA grad would definitive beautify my CV. But do I really need to spend my time learning the stuff and implementing solutions that (IMHO) are not effective any more?
Thank you in advance for your valuable answers,
Regrads,
Alexander Ulmer

IMO SCEA is a highlight in a CV. Anyway, there are also some other options that refer more to Web stuff, like WebComponent Certification (SCWCD), Web Services Certification (SCDJWS).



Lucy

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi Alexander !

In my current job (Java/J2EE developer, 4 year of experience (incl. EJB)) we develop J2EE/Web solutions on the basis of Spring and Hibernate. The EJB-Technology is out.
Looking at the SCEA track I've got the opinion that the SCEA exams have a definitive focus on EJB. The assignment (step 2) would be most probably a EJB-based solution.
The SCEA grad would definitive beautify my CV. But do I really need to spend my time learning the stuff and implementing solutions that (IMHO) are not effective any more?


EJB-Technology is perhaps out in your specific case, but not for some 70% of other Java pros. What is more EJB is a Java standard a SCEA ABSOLUTELY MUST be aware of, so study it anyway at least globally, while Spring and Hibernate are not standard at all and surely won't ever be (somewhat refurbished into newest EJB-3 standard).
But perhaps in your case you can afford avoiding SCWCD & SCBCD which lofgically should be a preliminary to SCEA IMHO.
So go at least for good notions about EJB, as SCEA it is a must.

Best regards.

[ravi janap]

Hi Alexander

This topic has been discussed before in SCBCD forum. Here is the link.

Hibernate vs EJB

I work for an insurance company and we use Hiberate and Struts to implement our web-based application. However, I have seen both EJB and Hibernate being used in my past projects. Technologies continously evolve and become standards. EJB is a standard and is here to stay and it is flexible and thats why we have Hibernate and Spring being adopted in EJB 3.0.

Thanks

-- Ravi

[Ajith Kallambella]

Originally posted by Alexander Ulmer:


....The EJB-Technology is out.

....But do I really need to spend my time learning the stuff and implementing solutions that (IMHO) are not effective any more?

In my opinion, those are pretty broad statements. EJBs are not silver bullets and that's why alternative technologies have emerged. In some architectures they may make sense, and in others they may not. With alternatives such as Spring, Hibernate and others, there are simply more number of tools in the toolkit. But the problem domain and architecture should drive the choice of tools, not the other way around. As an architect, you have an obligation to choose your tools based on their capability and applicability rather than rate of adoption, market share, hype curve etc. Also consider the willingness ( of your client ) to deviate from standards, tradeoffs in portability and so on.

I like Hibernate, Spring and have used quite a few of other non-J2EE[ read: cool, latest, white-hot, bleeding-edge, non-standard, opensource, not blessed by "Sun" ...] solutions such as Maven, Velocity, Cocoon, Baracuda ..]. In some cases the decision was based on criterion such as time-to-market, available talent, build-versus-buy(in this case "download") etc. In some cases there were overarching client mandates that required us to stay within the J2EE standards and and hence these frameworks were simply not an option.

Last but not the least, since this is a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect exam, that is a reason enough to adopt a J2EE standards based approach for the assignment. It is spelled out clearly in the Part II instructions.

Hope that helps. Good luck!
[ April 26, 2005: Message edited by: Ajith Kallambella ]

[Alexander Ulmer]

I thank all of you for your valuable comments.