tips and thoughs about the exam

[Paulo Silveira]

I ve done my test 2 days ago.
It seems nice, but there are some ambiguous tests.
The test focused TOO much in "who does this? the assembler, deployer, bean provider, etc...". MANY times one guy has all these roles. A manager should know about the roles, not me.
Another point that I didnt like is "what method can be found in interface X and Y". or, "I can remove one EJBObject through which interfaces?"... and so on. Seems like SCJP 1.2, "the interface that listen to the mouse clicking is: MouseMotinListener? MouseListener? MouseClickListener?" My GOD. I can solve this question in 2 seconds clicking on my API bookmark.
EJB QL has some bizarre drag and drops too.
The Beans questions were ALL nice! Entity, MDB and session. It should have more statefull/stateless questions.
Transactions questions are harder. And security questions seems to not prove anyone's knowledge about j2ee security.
It REALLY should have questions about best practices. Session Facades and Value Objects for example.

[jaideep singh]

Hi paulo...
thanks for your tips and thought for exam. It would be helpful for others like me to prepare for these type of questions.
with best regard's
jaideep

[Rangarajan Suresh]

Hi ,
I took the exam today.Just adding my 2 cents for those who r yet to take the exam.

[LIST][*]When I was through with my 183 questions, I was left with just 12 mins . I hardly had anytime to give any valuable comment. The beta exams could be made less taxing by reducing the no. of questions.120-150 questions would have given enough time.[*]Exceptions : Concentrate on CreateException,EJBException,ObjectNotFoundException. You can answer atleast 5 qns with this.
[*]Be clear on the API method calls for removing,creating,getting the Context,Primary Key,etc. The exam gives unjustified importance to these questions.[*]EJB-QL was pretty much straigh forward. You can comfortably clear the questions.[*]Entity Relationships One -Many & one - one result of manipulating the navigation collections[*]when a Session Bean /Entity instance has been removed and the client invokes calls on the comp. what exception is thrown[*]Be clear with the structure of <resource-ref>,<run-as>,<cmr-field>,<relationship-role>,<security-role>,<ejb-ref> elements[*]Security qns. on propogation of Principal,getCallerPrincipal(), responsibilities of EJB Roles in defining the security roles
[*]As I am thinking now, there is nothing outside the EJB spec. Of course no need to study chapters 12,13,14,19. Just go through the Spec. completely and you can do the exam extraordinarily. [*]Sorry, I am repeating many tips given earlier. But, just wanted to put down whatever is coming to my mind.
Kathy, I remember many questions from the exam which are not there in your collection. I shall put them over here by monday and you can make use of them
Thatz it guyz...All the best ....

[jaideep singh]

Hi suresh,
After reading your exam tips and thought ... i could say that u and paulo appeared in exam with proper preparation and total coverage of spec's...
Well it would be nice if we can get the info about those points also which were earlier post not been put forward.
btw thanks for commenting out here ...
with best regard's
jaideep

[srinivas katta]

Originally posted by Rangarajan Suresh:
Hi ,
Kathy, I remember many questions from the exam which are not there in your collection. I shall put them over here by monday and you can make use of them

I hope you do not mean the real exam questions!!!

[Kathy Sierra]

We have only posted a very small set of the mock exam questions that we need for the book, so you will see more and more questions over the next two months. It will take us some time, but we *will* get some up for every objective before the real exam is released.
No, they won't be the *real* questions , but since Bert and I were both on the exam development team (and Kimberly is around here somewhere too), we have a pretty guide idea of the form, nature, tone, difficulty of the questions -- so that is our goal with the mock exam questions.
Remember too that from the beta, you cannot get a good sense of how many questions per objective will actually be on the real exam. You might have had six questions on something that will show up in only ONE question on the final release.
And if a lot of people complain about a particular question (by commenting on it WHILE taking the exam), the question will probably be thrown out. So there will be some adjustments before the final exam is out.
cheers,
Kathy