By God's grace, passed the part 1 with 81% this morning. The exam was not that easy for me, compared to the previous sun exams I wrote. Got a few tough questions in legacy connectivity, and also in security . Also found a mistake in one of the ques... like what are NOT the characteristics of JMS (choose 3), and there was only one correct answer out of 4. So I assumed they were asking for characteristics of JMS. I got 100% for messaging, so my assumption was correct. Got just 10 minutes to do a final review. And some questions even took 3-4 minutes to answer.
References used:-
I used both cade's and paul's book for preparation. But this is just NOT enough for preparation. Have a look at this :-
http://www.bm-one.com/Se/scea1.html Apart from this, I created my own notes for reference.
There are a few resources available in yahoo groups (
scea, scea_prep). Some documents are useful, but others are just a repetion of what's being written in the above books. So rather create your own notes (if u have enough time)which will be more helpful.
Used whizlabs simulator, helped to some extend. But had some bugs. It's always good to practice with mock exams. But there aren't much mock exams available for scea compared to the other exams like
scjp, scbcd etc. And even if u find some mock exams, it will have questions copied from other mock exams. So you will be knowing the answers and cannot really judge your score.
My tips:-
Pay more attention to
EJB concepts, because you may get tough questions in other topics. So you cannot spare loosing marks in this area. And the questions in EJB are also not that difficult.
Always try to draw diagrams, when the question are like :- 2 webservers (behind firewall ), 3 app servers etc.
Try to eliminate answers, which is really helpful.
Look for keywords like TRUE, NOT TRUE, LEGACY application etc.
Security is one important topic - especially
applets.
Messaging, protocols etc were very easy !!!
Well, that's it from me. Not yet time to celebrate, planning to finish the part2 and 3 within the next 2 months.