Hi,
As every body has his / her own day, I was having today.
I cleared the Part I of
SCEA exam.
By God grace with 95%
.
I have sent this mail just to share my experience with all the
Java Ranchers.
Don't go with the percentage, I haven't done any thing brilliant and not I'm
.
But satisfied that I got passed what I aim and I tried to cement by basics and studied many new things which will help me a lot in the future.
Many - Many thanks to Java Ranchers, who helped me a lot to clear many things and many people who have responded to my questions ( many) which may be sometime very basic.
But thanks for your patience
I'm more then happy, because there are many reasons as every body use to have but still I'll write because it may be useful to the people who are planning and preparing for this exam and in the same situation like me.
Before this I never any certification exam, even not any exam after my graduation
, except few companies entrance papers
and nor I am a very fast learner, moderate is the right
word for me.
I'm not
SCJP, SCWCD or SCDBCD and having 4.5 yrs of work ex in java /
j2ee.
So, it was a tough path for me to give this exam and the other hindrances were I was not doing any thing in J2EE from around last 2 years and did EJB coding around 2 years back. And from last two years I was involved in some small R & D and mainly with Core Java + DB + XML's.
But many thanks to my colleague Atul, who is senior to me, he gave me courage to give this exam and then I started.
And many thanks to my boss, who gave me some time to prepare this exam.
I think you all would be tiring of reading this Oscar award receiving kind of script
But I worked little hard to clear by basics of many which I have used long back or even which I haven't even used many technologies practically like in Security like SSL etc.
So, some times having tough time to conceptualize each and every thing.
Now for things which I have to actually tell.
I got 60% in Legacy Connectivity, and in rest of the topics I got 100% marks.
I have used broadly these links and books for the preparation:
For study:
1. Marc Cade's Book.
2. Paul Allen books - Few chapters thoroughly and few just quickly
3. Enterprise JavaBeans�, Third Edition, by Richard Monson-Haefel (Whole book for revising each and every thing regarding EJB's, didnt get time in the last to review.)
4. EJB_specs_1.1 ( Mainly Session bean / Entity Beans - Client/Container contract chapter, Transaction, Exception) But study only after you have studied any basic book of ejb and basics are clear to you. Like I did, this is my personal opinion.
5. Mastering EJB 2nd Edition - Ed Roman ( Transations, EJB API)
6. Firewall & Clustering - OnJava articles (study like reverse proxy, stateful firewalls etc. by easily searching on net)
7. Design
Patterns - None other then GoF. Firstly I have studied this book in that much detail and thoroughly. And its worth for giving this much time.
And find some corresponding J2EE API which are based on some patterns from
Stephan Notes, I think I got this from Yahoo Architect Group.
8. Security from many notes - Paul Allen for few things like from J2EE point of view. Java2 Security notes from sun. Ramu's notes of yahoo group.
9. Legacy Connectivity - Ramu's notes from Yahoo grp., Paul Allen book.
10. Common Architecture: Paul Allen.
11. Applicability of J2EE: Core J2EE patterns ( Thats give me some hang over of J2EE, which wasnt there from long time for me, Paul Allen.
12. Messaging: Paul Allen chapter.
And by default Marc Cade book for all the topics.
Mock Exams:
I use all the links given in the Java Ranch links.
+
http://www.moelholm.com/ +
http://www.exforsys.com/certification/sun-certification.html +
http://www.geekinterview.com/Certification-Dumps/Sun/310-051/page1 ( there are many given, but I saw only few randomly)
I think those are enough.
You will find these mocks very helpful to get the feel of the exam pattern.
Last day I have used notes of:
1. Stephan - only for Design Patterns
2. John Wetherbie Notes
3. IBM guild for SCEA : j-scea-a4.pdf
Few suggestions: I did initial some mistake by staring solving answers for the topics I use to finish from one book or article but not stably cleared the doubts on that topic. And then few answers I use to give right and few wrong.
For wrong one I use to see the explanations ( if available) and try to clear my doubts. There are two problem with this approach that the answers may be wrong so your fundamentals may become wrong and that is the worst thing.
Secondly, when you will give these papers or questions for your final review you are having some where in your mind that you have already know the answer so you will not put your efforts to solve the problem (It happens with me).
This could also be a problem in the final exam, even if you get the same question
Now the experience of my paper, as I have told earlier mock exams helps me a lot.
Questions were not that tough as everybody use to say, I realized today
I have finished in appx. 45 mins the first round. Then did two rounds of
review.
Most of the questions were not ambiguous ( as per my understanding).
2-3 Scenario based questions were the tough one and 2-3 legacy conn. one where I missed the points.
But as many people have already told that try to think what you think and not the mock exams use to tell. And finally it all depends on your day, I believe in this also, atleast for the questions which are going to come in the paper.
Again thanks to all of you for and Java Ranch site helping me out to clear this exam.
I'm exhaustive right now
and not thinking about the Part II.
So, will not be sending any questions and doubts for some time alteast.
Just to say bye but one doubt
, Is there any time limit constraint to give the second part after clearing Part I, for e.g. within 6 months or 1 Year I have to clear the second and third Part.
Thanks & Regards,
Manish Malhotra
SCEA Part I
