Hello everyone...
I am creating this topic to help other people on their path to take the new
SCEA exam.
This topic has two purposes:
1)To centralize good quality information regarding the new SCEA exam. And;
2)To motivate our friends from all over the world, to work hard to become SCEAs.
To get started, let me share some motivational thought related to the benefits of becoming a SCEA... Thought it�s a joke, why not believe on this?! Remember y�all� Hope is the last to die� hehehe
Here we go�. When you become a SCEA it qualifies you to be called �good quality
Java professional�� Good quality Java professionals make more money on their jobs. Making more money on their jobs, those good quality Java professionals travel more� Traveling more good quality Java professionals have a bigger chance to travel to those nice symposiums that happen in Las Vegas� In Las Vegas good quality Java professionals are very likely to gamble their rich money on one of those nice Casinos. Having the expertise in Java good quality Java professionals will use their extremely power knowledge of the java.util.Math class and it will make them win millions of dollars. Becoming a millionaire, a good quality Java professional will call their humble friends from javaranch for monthly based good quality no
JEE talking parties full of good food and beers. Having spent all the gambling money with their wonderful friends at javaranch, the once rich good quality Java professional will once again become a normal SCEA 5 professional. Once again a normal human being the once millionaire SCEA 5 professional will take the next SCEA exam and the whole story will repeat over and over and over until the end of times. (auhuhauhuhauhauhauhauhauhauhahuauhahuauh)
Great story isn�t it?! Now let�s get started�
To the ones who wish to become a Java architects my first words are�
SCEA exam is not a very hard exam. Maybe a little bit but not very hard.
In my opinion, the most challenging part of SCEA is its first part. You really have to study for it, (at least I had to). hehehehe
If you pass the multiple choices� part, part 2 is just a matter of knowing how to draw UML diagrams applying the correct design
pattern to your given project. You may ask yourself, what tool should I use? Well, in my case, I used Jude Community, but you are free to use what ever tool you feel most comfortable with. Some people complain Jude is very limited tool. Well, it might be but in my case I felt it was good enough for the task.
After your upload your project, it is highly recommended that you take part three as soon as possible. At part three you have to answer questions explaining your projects� architectural decisions. You have to explain what design patterns and technologies you used on your project. It is very likely that, most of the time, you will use, not to say always, a 3-tiers architecture.
Action->Service->DAOs
Including a technology�
JSF -> SFSB and SLSB (with or with out web service) -> JPA (EntityManager)
Your must give reasons why you choose a given technology for your front controller. Following there is a list of front controllers you might want to use on your project.
1)JSF component based
2)Action framework (a framework implementing the action pattern) i.e.
Struts 2
3)Pure
Servlet +
JSP as
There is no right or wrong answer on part 3. If you give good reasons to support your design, you�ll be fine.
You might use EJB 3 technology in case your project outlines that it needs to be online 24/7 and that it will be heavily accessed. EJB 3 application server includes features such as load balance and clustering that will helps you meet Non-function requirements, such as, performance, scalability, availability, etc.
A little bit out of topic, but maybe not that much, I think Spring Framework could be used on your SCEA project. I have never heard of anybody who actually did that. Have anybody heard of somebody who actually used Spring on part 2 of their SCEA? Seriously y�all I would be a big fan of this person.
What concerns security, you must give reasons why you are using HTTP or HTTPs. For example, if your applications deal with credit card number etc it is very likely that you will need to use HTTPs to secure user�s data from unauthorized users.
Regarding part 1 of the SCEA 5 exam�. There is a very good topic where many people gave their feedbacks about SCEA 5 beta - part 1 experience.
https://coderanch.com/t/156041/java-Architect-SCEA/certification/Wrote-SCEA-Beta-Test-Exam Regarding the material I have used for SCEA my preparation here it goes a list of it....
Head First Design pattern - Marks Cade's book.
Head First Web Components - Marks Cade's book. just a look since I am already a SCWCD
Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API - don�t know the author's name.
SCEA study guide - Marks Cade's book
Research on the internet.
To conclude, I would say that in order for you to become a SCEA professional, must enjoy studying and working with J2EE. There is nothing worst then doing something and not having fun doing it. SCEA professional must enjoy learning new patterns and architectures.
HTH,
Fl�vio Oliva
[ March 20, 2008: Message edited by: Flavio Oliva ]