SCBCD 5.0 - 100%

[Mateusz Maksymiuk]

3 months of hard work resulted in 100% pass. I love getting 100% and it's my second time (SCJP 5.0 also 100%).

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

Wow! That's killer!

You're one of the select few.

Bask in the glory.

-Cameron McKenzie

[Jasmin Kelley]

Hi

Congrats ...amazing score...


Did you have prior experience in EJB

what books did you refer.

Does HF EJB book have stuff specifically related to EJB2 and is it much different from EJB 3. I mean would be good to read that book as a newbie, if I wanted to prepare for EJB3 SCBCD 5 exam.

what other books and notes did you refer.

thanks in advance.

[Patrick Beck]

Originally posted by Mateusz Maksymiuk:
3 months of hard work resulted in 100% pass. I love getting 100% and it's my second time (SCJP 5.0 also 100%).

awesome man, how much did you pay to sun *scnr*

[Vassili Vladimir]

Congrats

[Sundaram Karthick]

Awesome, congratulations!!!
Would be nice if you could share your preperation and exam experience

[Mateusz Maksymiuk]

Thanks Cameron,

But, it is nothing much.
Everyone can do this.
The most important things are:
1. Chose proper method of preparation. (with wrong one you may spend 1 year and get only 70%). I think the most important thing of this point is to use as much sources of knowledge as you can. Don't rely on single source (i.e. only one book or one mock exam). I rely on following sources:
- standard EJB 3.0 books (OReily, Mastering, Apress, Beginning)
- MZ Study Guide
- writting many code (short programs to test many cases)
- few full mock exams from different vendors (totally about 900 questions)
- free sun mock exams: 30 quest. EJB, 10 quest. persistence
- javaranch - of course !!!
2. Be systematic and determined (spend 2-4 hours every day).

I don't have any expirience in EJB at all. Once a few years ago, at my computer studies I wrote a small EJB 2.1 application (but it was very short and simple).
Books are good at beginning, when you start to learn technology. I read all 4 them simulatenously in 3 weeks. Also do some examples from them. I noticed that reading simulatenous a few books is really good, because the knowledge is better remembered and each book suplement each other.
Next was MZ Study guide, and writing a lot of short programs written by myself, to use gained knowledge in practise and check various cases: what happen if ... ?
The last month was mock exams. This part is essential if you want to have 100%. Because even if you know good the specification and technology, you go to exam, you will surely meet a few questions which you answer bad (your time is limited, exam may stress you or even you can badly read or interpret given question). The mock exams give you oportunity to struggle with many various cases and are excellent suplement of theoretical and practical knowledge. With the number of 900 questions (3 mock exams) you may be confident that you were familiar with almost every possible case!

With such technique, I guarantee everyone will achieve at least 90% or very probably almost 100%.

Regards

[Mateusz Maksymiuk]

Oh, I totally forgotten about EJB 3.0 specification (core & persistence). It is a very good suplementation of MZ Study Guide. I don't read whole of it, but the most important fragments (i.e. allowed operations in EJB, transactions, security, etc.)

[mallika shah]

Congrats Mateusz!!!

Really a fantastic score..

I am also preparing for this exam, was reading O'reilly book,so wanted to know about how many chapters did you go through..
In some post I read , its worth reading only till chatper 17th.Is it really so?
what is the name of the book you have mentioned "beginning"

mallika

[Mateusz Maksymiuk]

Hi Mallika,
All my books:
- Mastering EJB 3.0 2006
- O'Reilly Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 2006 (5th Ed.)
- Apress EJB 3.0 Java Persistence API
- Apress Beginning EJB 3 Application Development
- Manning Scbcd Exam Study Kit Java Businessponent Developer Certification For Ejb Jun 2005 (EJB 2.1)
- EJB 3.0 Specfication (core & persistence)
- MZ Study Guide

After 17 chapter, are:
- 2 chapters about Web Services (exam includes WS questions!),
- 1 chapter about integration EJB with JSP & Servlets
- last chapter describing sample application considerations
If you can, read them all. The more you know, the better for you. It's only about 100 pages (1-2 days of reading). Remember it: The harder you train, the easier you win. So, train hard, win easy.

[Benoît de Chateauvieux]

Congrats
Fantastic score.
Do you plan SCEA, now ?

Beno�t

[Paul Michael]

That's simply an amazing score! It can't get any better than that.

Can you also share the three different simulators that you used? Given limited budget, which one would you recommend the most?

Thank you very much!

[Ashwini Ghamandi]

Congrats ! Fantastic score !




and thanks for sharing your expirience .

[Mateusz Maksymiuk]

Yes, I plan SCEA in longer perspective, but first I would like to take SCMAD.
About mock exam simulators. I used three (all for EJB 3.0):
- [Removed reference to illegal material - Christophe]
- Whizlabs SCBCD 5.0 (1 diagnostic exam, 3 practise test + 1 final test)
- Enthuware EJB+ V5(4 practise test + 1 final test)
Total over 900 questions.
Short characeristics:
Whizlabs:
+ explanaions to questions
+ good and functional user interface
- expensive, 225.00 PLN (about 80$) (now, till 31 Oct is 50% discount)
- simulator has few errors in questions/answers and application (in my, the evaluation of final test didn't work so I had to validate questions manually) - it is so called "version 1.0 syndrome"
- lack of updates of simulator (there were none since version 1.0)
Enthuware:
+ explanaions to questions
+ good and functional user interface
+ a lot of very interesting questions about transactions, exceptions, entity managers, security (i.e. what happens if client with TX context calls bean A with TX attribute ..., which calls bean B with TX attribute ... and bean B throws ... exception) with many options to check (2,3 or 4); these questions ensure that you have very good understanding of topics about transaction, exceptions
+ cheap (less than 40$)
+ systematic updates available (in last 2 weeks were a several updates of question bank)
- a several errors in questions/answers

[ October 30, 2007: Message edited by: Christophe Verre ]

[Christophe Verré]

Congratulations Mateusz. (please check your private messages)

[Srikanth Basa]

Wow thats a fantastic score ! Congratulations !

[Nagendra Inuguri]

WoW. Whatte Score !!! Congraaatulations !!!

[Kiaama Liames]

Congrats !!

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Congratulations !!!

Glad to know my guide was helpful.

regards,
MZ

[Jigar Upadhyay]

I must have to say "YOU HAVE DONE AMAZING WORK". Congrates.

[James Mark]

you Rockzzzz

[yuga dev]

Hi,

Congrats !!! very gud score

[Sharma Ritu]

Congratulations for the perfect score! We are glad to have contributed to your success!


Best wishes
Ritu Sharma
--------------------
Whizlabs Software
Success, certified!
World's BEST Java Certification Preparation Solutions
SCJA| SCJP 5.0 | SCJP 5.0 (Training))| SCWCD SCBCD | SCDJWS | SCEA | SCMAD
With Unconditional 150% Test PASS Guarantee!

[Siva Mariappan]

Congrats that's really great.

[Anna Hays]

First of all, congraduations! It is an amazing chievement.

Secondly, I am well and truely admire your attitude towards learning and achieving what you want.

[Mateusz Maksymiuk]

Maybe it's enough to say that I'm capricorn. And capricorns as anyone else love to climb to the top of the mountain.

[ikenna okpala]

Hey Congrats that is a perfect score !!!

[Kamlesh Devani]

Hey Congrats first of all. Can you tell me the link of small examples you implemented. Or it's just you referred the books and based on that implemented the examples. Since mostly in all these books you don't get practical complete small examples for every scenerio. Thanks a lot in advance.
[ November 25, 2007: Message edited by: Kamlesh Devani ]

[Murugesan Narayanasamy]

Excellent !

[Joe San]

Truly amazing to have 100% in SCJP and SCBCD. Amazing!

[Freddy Wong]

Wow! Impressive score

[Mateusz Maksymiuk]

Hi Kamlesh,

Almost all of these short apps were composed by myself. I don't like to use ready-made examples which you only copy and paste and your mind doesn't need to work at all - you don't learn anything. I used to do it this way:

0. Read the theory first and analyse some examples from book. Try to remember as much as you can (but without exaggeration).
1. Think and arrange some simple, virtual scenario.
(i.e. client, calls SLSB, which sends message to MDB, that MDB print this message to screen or write it to DB using JPA).
2. Try to write code that implements this scenario, but do it only by yourself (no ready-made examples of code, no lookup to books). Also don't try to lookup to API docs (only when you really must) - don't worry, at worst the compiler will show some errors.
3. Compile the code and correct errors.
4. Run the code and check the results. Correct any bugs. (Murphy claimed that every non-trivial program has at least one bug. )

For every chapter of SCBCD study guide make several such examples. I think 10-15 will be enough. First example will take some time, maybe 20-30 min, but every next one will take less time. But this is the time when you are really learning!!! Your mind must work and think. Don't use any IDE, only notepad, javac, jar, etc. After several examples (when you will be already familiar with manually making ejb-jar) you may use Ant to increase your productivity.

It's up to you what scenarios you will implement. My few examples were (most of them are really stupid and unuseful but they are ):
- make concurrent update to OptimisticLockException be thrown
- write simple servlet that calls SLSB that add records to DB
- create entity bean with native query that uses SQLResultSetMapping
- and many others...

Regards:
Mateusz

[Piotr Gmyz]

Congratulations

I will try to follow your footsteps I cleared SCJP 5.0 with 100%. Now I'm preparing for SCWCD 1.4... Well... it's a long way to go.

Congratulations

[Kamlesh Devani]

Hello, Thanks a lot for your reply. I am sure your suggestion would help me a lot.

[Krishna Srinivasan]

awesome. Thats realy great score!!

[yuga dev]

Wow,

Congratulations !!! That is amazing

All the best for next exams