Passed SCBCD 5, sharing experience:

[Camilo Morales]

Hey Ranchers,

I just took the SCBCD 5 exam and I'm very glad to say that thank God I Passed it. I had 48 of 61 questions which is 78% (not so good ... but considering that I passed the SCJP 5 exam on July 12 and studied for SCBCD 5 for like 3 weeks ,,, it is not too bad either). I also have some previous experience (mostly college work) in J2EE 1.3 but almost none in JEE 5-EJB 3.

I want to thank all the ranchers here that helped me with my questions ... Mikalai Zaikin for his notes (this reading is a MUST) ... and also the experience sharing of Ashraf Fouadl and Shivani Chandna because they were VERY helpful.

I think the best learning path towards the SCBCD 5.0 certification (IF you don't want to read directly the specification) is:

1- Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 - O'Reilly.
2- Pro EJB 3 Java Persistence API - Apress. (Chapters 3 to 7)
3- Mikalai Zaikin Notes (With the Specification in the other hand because MZ maps every certification objective to the specification's specific chapters).

- The two first books are to start to learn EJB 3 architecture from 0%. Actually, the last chapters of the Oreilly's book about databse locks and Isolations levels are not (at least for me) really important. The most important locking technique for this exam is the Optimistic Locking ... (I got like 3 @Version field related questions).

-MZ Notes are focused on the test. They go objective-by-objective. MZ points all the sentences and words that are key for the test. That is really really helpful.


* Suggestions:

Is very important to read the tables (and the following explanations) of the Specification about 'Operations Allowed' in every type of method of every EJB 3 component. There are many questions about this, because in code-questions you have to check first if the operations used are allowed in each method.

Try to memorize the least you can, memorizing too much can be dangerous. Everything (or at least almost everything) that is restricted o required in the specification have its 'Why' explanation, for example All the EJB components needs a no-args constructor, but do not memorize this, understand that they need it because since the container manage the EJB lyfecycle, at creation time, the only way he can create the instances of the EJBs is with the newInstance() method of the reflection API which calls a no-args constructor of the beans ... so, if there is no default constructor, EJB creation is not possible. Just a simple example to clarify what I mean.

I find very helpful the Relational-world (Persistence provider) point of view at trying to understands the @Many-related relationships ... How the Persistence provider is going to persist a Collection (Foreing key with Unique constraint - FK without Unique constraint - JoinTable... etc)?, Why the @ManyToOne side of the bidirectional @OneToMany - @ManyToOne is always the owning side ?... etc etc. (At least 3 or 4 relationships questions are guaranteed to appear in the test)

My worst section was Security ... I really did not think it was important for this test ... and here is the result ... lol.


I hope this suggestions help everybody here that is planning to take this test.

Regards,

[Khaled Mahmoud]

Congratulations

[Daniel Abella]

Congratulations!

[Shivani Chandna]

Hiya Camilom,

Congratulations!! You really did well - given the short time.
And I always enjoyed reading your questions....


Hope you do well ahead.
Regards,
Shivani

[Raghavan Muthu]

Congratulations Camilo Morales

Thanks for the tips and suggestions!

[Stein Vom]

Congratulations Camilo, please share your note with us.

[Joe San]

Congrats!

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Congrats, Camilo !!!

Glad to know my notes were helpful..

regards,
MZ

[Sam Sunamin]

Hi Camilo Morales

Thank you for sharing experience. Congratulations.

You got great score in just three weeks. I am even afraid to think about taking exam in such a short time. I have no experience about j2ee or ejb30.

I hope you will visit our study groups.

DO you use any mock exam?

Sam
[ August 18, 2007: Message edited by: Sam Sunamin ]

[Camilo Morales]

Hey,

Thank you all for your replies.

Sam, the only mock exam I found was the one I refered to you in this thread:

https://coderanch.com/t/163078/java-EJB-SCBCD/certification/Mock-Exam-SCBCD

,,, I didnt found any other besides the one from Sun.

Regards,

[Christophe Verré]

Congratulations Camilo
What are you waiting for ? Put your name in the SCBCD Wall Of Fame I'm sure that your experience will help many ranchers wishing to pass SCBCD 5.

[Mohit Chadha]

Congratulations Camilo!

[santhosh Gopalakrishna Bajja]

Congrats Camilo Morales,

[Benoît de Chateauvieux]

Congratulations, Camilo.
And thanks a lot for sharing your study path.
What's the next certification ?

[Camilo Morales]

I'm just wondering when the SCEA version for JEE 5 is comming out ?

[Marcus Green]

"and studied for SCBCD 5 for like 3 weeks"

What was your knowledge of the SCBCD subjects like before you started studying. I would find it hard to learn even one of the topic areas properly in 3 weeks?

[Camilo Morales]

I also have some previous experience (mostly college work) in J2EE 1.3 but almost none in JEE 5-EJB 3.

Yes, you are right, It was hard ... I had to take the test with such short study time because the Company I work for is relocating me and now I have 1 week before leaving my home house to go to another continent and then I won't be having to much time for preparing. (Anyway, now I'll wait until SCEA for JEE 5 comes out)

I studied around 3-4 hours per day. For me that was a lot. I read in the afternoon and made the examples in the night, 1 chapter (or objective in the case of MZ notes) by day ... 2 if they were not too long. (I have to rescheduled the exam 2 times).

Thanks for your interest,

[Deepak Mula]

Congratsss Thats really greattt, you have inspired me, I bought voucher 3 months back but still not started.

[Camilo Morales]

Originally posted by hanumadeepak muvvala:
Congratsss Thats really greattt, you have inspired me, I bought voucher 3 months back but still not started.

Thank you so much for your words ... you may want to take a look at our study group where you cand find a lot of useful preparation files that members have uploaded like the Mikalai Zaikin guide in pdf or links to some mock exams.

http://groups.google.com/group/scbcd50-study-group

Regards,