Passed part II + III with 98%

[Pijush Das]

Congrats on your great success!!
As I'm working on part 2, I've question for you.
1.How do you incorporate TransMaster(Credit Card Authentication System)into your diagram?
2.For alternative flow did you draw seperate sequence diagram?
3.What is meant by "Equipment" (Specified in the BDM) in flight?
I would be thankful for your reply.
Thanks in advance,
Pijush

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by Pijush Das:
Congrats on your great success!!
As I'm working on part 2, I've question for you.
1.How do you incorporate TransMaster(Credit Card Authentication System)into your diagram?
2.For alternative flow did you draw seperate sequence diagram?
3.What is meant by "Equipment" (Specified in the BDM) in flight?
I would be thankful for your reply.
Thanks in advance,
Pijush

Hi
1. I cannot answer this question (it's too specific).
2. I draw alternative flow on the same sequence diagram, adding a comment to make it clear.
3. sorry again, this question is too specific..
Regards
Alain Hsiung
Ideartis Inc.

[sh yh]

Hi Alain,
I have one question which would happen in a real-world application. Assume there is a LoginProcessor for processing clients' logins through different kinds of UIs. Will you present this LoginProcessor as a Session Bean or just a Plain Old Java Object? Thank you.

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by sh yh:
Hi Alain,
I have one question which would happen in a real-world application. Assume there is a LoginProcessor for processing clients' logins through different kinds of UIs. Will you present this LoginProcessor as a Session Bean or just a Plain Old Java Object? Thank you.

Login service can be considered a common service to both presentation layers (web-UI and Java-GUI) and the login UIs should be different depending on the presentation layer (web-UI should have a kind of Servlet and Java-GUI should have a kind of JPanel). There are many ways to implement the Login service (as EJB, directly as Database call through JDBC, etc.). This is up to you.
Regards
Alain Hsiung
Ideartis Inc.

[allison ai]

Hi Alain, Thanks so very much for your reply! I got too busy with other stuff and had not checked the forum for a couple of days. Your reply has clarified things for me. One more question, could you please point to a source, with a component diagram example would be ideal, that illustrates (at least to a certain degree if not completely) your understanding of component diagrams, which seems to be in accordance with that adopted by the assignment. Thanks again!

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by allison ai:
Hi Alain, Thanks so very much for your reply! I got too busy with other stuff and had not checked the forum for a couple of days. Your reply has clarified things for me. One more question, could you please point to a source, with a component diagram example would be ideal, that illustrates (at least to a certain degree if not completely) your understanding of component diagrams, which seems to be in accordance with that adopted by the assignment. Thanks again!

Hi Allison
- the book "developing enterprise java applications with J2EE and UML" p.166-172 + p.268-171, presents components diagrams: web components diagram with JSP, Servlets, HTML pages components and their relationship, as well as EJB components diagram with xxHome, xxRemote, xxEJB classes (which is IMHO too fine grained). The book is really bad (nothing I could learn or use anyhow) but the example of the web components diagram gives an idea of how to make it for the exam (this is the only appropriate diagram I've seen and it's only a few components). On the other hand the EJB components diagram gives you an example of how not to do it.
- UML component diagram guidelines http://www.modelingstyle.info/componentDiagram.html is misleading because the components of the component diagram are in fact packages. So this is an example of wrong granularity (too coarse grained) for components.
- I don't know of any other resources, unfortunately. I've never seen a big picture of a components diagram for J2EE at the right granularity.
- What is important (beside the granularity) is to represents all the (directional) relationhips and to label (consistantly) the semantic of those relationships. E.g. "build" (between a JSP and a HTML page), "submit" between a form and a servlet, "use bean", "has", "call", etc.
Regards
Alain Hsiung
Ideartis inc.

[allison ai]

Thanks Alain! You are the best! I'm so glad that I had finally asked you about component diagrams after reading much wrong info all over the places. You've helped!! On the other hand, why is it so hard to find the right materials on component diagram while Sun is giving so much emphasis on it? Anyway, I'm getting the book right away. Thanks again!

[Raj Raj]

Congrats Alain
Have got questions ...
1) What level of details are need in the class diagram. Is it necessary to show all the attributes/operation for the class.
2) Do the class diagram needs to be J2EE dependent (means show the EntityEJBs,SessionEJBs,etc). If it is J2EE independent then do we need to show the command classes as simple classes and make that SessionEntityEJBs in the component Diagram.
3) JSPs can be a different component but how about the application client. Can the application client be shown as a component or need to create a Class Diagrams for that too.
4) Do we need to create the package diagram
5) In sequence diagram for each different type of client do we need to show the different sequence diagram or can be represented as a "Client".
6) Can class diagram and component diagrams can be broken into multiple diagrams or needs to be shown as single diagram.

Answer to above questions are truely appreciated. Do not need the specifics but any suggestions will be helpful.

Thanks in advance for the help

Raj

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by Raj Raj:
Congrats Alain
Have got questions ...
1) What level of details are need in the class diagram. Is it necessary to show all the attributes/operation for the class.
2) Do the class diagram needs to be J2EE dependent (means show the EntityEJBs,SessionEJBs,etc). If it is J2EE independent then do we need to show the command classes as simple classes and make that SessionEntityEJBs in the component Diagram.
3) JSPs can be a different component but how about the application client. Can the application client be shown as a component or need to create a Class Diagrams for that too.
4) Do we need to create the package diagram
5) In sequence diagram for each different type of client do we need to show the different sequence diagram or can be represented as a "Client".
6) Can class diagram and component diagrams can be broken into multiple diagrams or needs to be shown as single diagram.

Answer to above questions are truely appreciated. Do not need the specifics but any suggestions will be helpful.

Thanks in advance for the help

Raj

Hi Raj
1. show all the "relevant" attributes and operations. Relevant means that they somehow support the use-cases. It helps you (and the examiner) to be convinced that the class is really needed and which role it plays. On the other side it doesn't matter if you ommit some of them. In reality you won't be able to specify all of them in a first design. The goal is to have a stable class diagram.
2. No J2EE specific construct in the class diagram. The class diagram contains only business classes. Yes the command class and J2EE specific classes are shown in the component diagram.
3. I chose to show the classes of the application client in the component diagram. These components are all "normal" java classes. So it is semantically equivalent to a class diagram. You could choose to show the application client as separate class diagram. But the requirement specify to have 1 class diagram and 1 component diagram. I stick to it.
4. Not necessary to show package diagram. I chose to show packages to group components in the component diagram.
5. Yes you can choose to show a generic "Client" as you mentioned. This is in case a good idea to reduce the complexity of the interaction diagram. It is not wrong because I got 100% on this.
6. I chose to have 1 class diagram and 1 component diagram. The component diagram is quite big but the exminer has perhaps a A1 plotter. I think it's not wrong to split the component diagram, in say 4-5 subdiagrams, but be careful to represent *all* the relationships between the components of separate subdiagrams.
Regards
Alain Hsiung
Ideartis Inc.

[Raj Raj]

Hi Alian thaks for your answer ....
Have got more questions on Component Diagram ... Am not able to find much of the material on that ...Also lot of material gives wrong information ...
-- Did you showed component Diagram with Nodes ?
-- I am bit confused how to show the protocols like TCP/IP,JAX-RPC etc... Do we need to show that in component Diagrams, because that is the part of the Deployment Diagram. Did you showed all that stuff ? I am asking that because Fowler Book example (UML Distelled) showed in that form. So am bit confused ....
-- Also I have component e.g Business Delegate ... Which I want to show as a component of web container and at the same time as a component of application client. How to depict that behavior in the component Diagram...
Thank you in advance you r really helpful...
Raj

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by Raj Raj:
Hi Alian thaks for your answer ....
Have got more questions on Component Diagram ... Am not able to find much of the material on that ...Also lot of material gives wrong information ...
-- Did you showed component Diagram with Nodes ?
-- I am bit confused how to show the protocols like TCP/IP,JAX-RPC etc... Do we need to show that in component Diagrams, because that is the part of the Deployment Diagram. Did you showed all that stuff ? I am asking that because Fowler Book example (UML Distelled) showed in that form. So am bit confused ....
-- Also I have component e.g Business Delegate ... Which I want to show as a component of web container and at the same time as a component of application client. How to depict that behavior in the component Diagram...
Thank you in advance you r really helpful...
Raj

Hi Raj
1. I didn't show nodes in the component diagram. I did show big packages like web container and decide to show a component only once. The semantic of my packages is a "deployment" semantic. I.e. a package is similar to a node but do not use the node syntax (we are not showing the physical diagram here).
2. I didn't show protocols either
3. I didn't worry about duplicating the business delegate in the web container and the application client.
Regards
Alain Hsiung
Ideartis Inc.

[Hafizur Rahman]

Originally posted by alain hsiung:
Just saw the result today.
Score: 98

Congratulations. GREAT SCORE.
I m planning to prepare for the exam. My professional experience is little. But I am confident that I can overcome. However, would u plz briefly let me know ur insight about taking the exam without having much experience?
If u don't mind, would u let us know ur experience? Hope I get some light.

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by Hafizur Rahman:

Congratulations. GREAT SCORE.
I m planning to prepare for the exam. My professional experience is little. But I am confident that I can overcome. However, would u plz briefly let me know ur insight about taking the exam without having much experience?
If u don't mind, would u let us know ur experience? Hope I get some light.

Hi Hafizur
1. If you have only little professional experience, the best thing to do is learn OOA-OOD. Object-oriented analysis and design is the basis for any architecture, like capturing the business requirement, understanding and creating use-cases, creating the business object model and interaction diagram. To understand what to do to create the component diagram is more difficult (see my previous post in this thread). I would recommend OOA-OOD also for people with great experience who did not yet learned it. I know people with quite a lot of experience who didn't know the basis of OOA-OOD and had difficulties to process the exam part II. They lost a lot of time in going round in circles without methodology. For part I you have to read the many articles and perhaps some books (design patterns), read the recommendations of Bruce Yu'site (http://www.bm-one.com/Se/scea1.html and
http://www.bm-one.com/Se/scea2.html), this newsgroup and do the whizlabs mock tests.
2. My background: bachelor and master degree in computer science from the swiss federal institute of technology (ETH -where Nicklaus Wirth is professor), phd in computer science, certified IT project manager (IT project+ certified professional), java programming trainer, OOA-OOD and design patterns trainer, 14 years software engineering experience (Java since december 1995, 8 years also as software architect, 2 years also as methodology consultant). 8 years as consultant. 4 years experiences with app servers (Ejipt -in 1998, Weblogic, Websphere, JBoss, Silverstream). Lead developer or architect in 20 e-business projects since 1998 for 6 international companies. Co-founder of the Java Users Group Switzerland in 1997. Practicing member of the Worldwide Institute of Software Architect (wwisa). Founder of Ideartis inc. in 1998.
Regards
Alain Hsiung
Ideartis inc.

[sh yh]

Hi Alain,
One question for your: Did you show any Entity EJBs in your Component Diagram(s)?
TIA.

[Hafizur Rahman]

Hi Alain Hsiung
Thanks for ur nice comments & insight and sharing ur experience.
I am already going on with ur suggested path. I feel glad that I am on the right way.
You have a long successful career.CONGRATULATIONS. But I just started(2yr.). Suppose I have passed the exam. Can it help me to be a J2EE architect immidiately? I know that Architect is more a strategic position than a technical one in some companies even today. So taking the exam is not a good choice for me, but the preparing is. BUT I AM EAGER TO TAKE. HOW CAN I JUSTIFY?
How about this?
I need more 3/4 months for Part I.
+ 6/8 months for Part II/III.
---------------------------------
More one year of experience.
I can study some open source projects and get idea about architectural considerations for medium/big projects. I am a SCJP with 94%. I have some general/hands on practising experience for J2EE platform [architecture and API]. Does it look sound 3+yr. experience for a J2EE architect? I am already leading some projects.
Again thanks.

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by sh yh:
Hi Alain,
One question for your: Did you show any Entity EJBs in your Component Diagram(s)?
TIA.

Yes sure!

[alain hsiung]

Originally posted by Hafizur Rahman:
Hi Alain Hsiung
Thanks for ur nice comments & insight and sharing ur experience.
I am already going on with ur suggested path. I feel glad that I am on the right way.
You have a long successful career.CONGRATULATIONS. But I just started(2yr.). Suppose I have passed the exam. Can it help me to be a J2EE architect immidiately? I know that Architect is more a strategic position than a technical one in some companies even today. So taking the exam is not a good choice for me, but the preparing is. BUT I AM EAGER TO TAKE. HOW CAN I JUSTIFY?
How about this?
I need more 3/4 months for Part I.
+ 6/8 months for Part II/III.
---------------------------------
More one year of experience.
I can study some open source projects and get idea about architectural considerations for medium/big projects. I am a SCJP with 94%. I have some general/hands on practising experience for J2EE platform [architecture and API]. Does it look sound 3+yr. experience for a J2EE architect? I am already leading some projects.
Again thanks.

Hi Hafizur
As with every exam you need some experiences, not just exam preparation. You know that already with your SCJP. SCEA needs certainly more experience because the knowledge required cannot be put in 1 book (like programming).
Your question is difficult to answer. I know people with only 2 years J2EE experience who passed the SCEA exam. But others who worked on J2EE somehow during 4 years will not yet try because they feel they would fail.
I recommend you to read the SCEA study guide and try to get a feeling of your level and how long would it take to prepare. You know it best.
The other thing is REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE. I think that certification is only good with real-world experiences. You can learn quite a lot by looking at open-source project but the experience in doing projects is extremly important. I would say that one have to participate in a least 3 J2EE projects during 2 years.
Taking the exam after 2, 4 or whatever years of experiences is a matter of compromise with your time, your need to earn money, your opportunity to work on projects, and so many thinks.
My recommendation:
Don't prepare the exam during 1 year but think of the stuff you want to learn during this year. Prepare the exam in less than 3 months.
Regards
Alain Hsiung
Ideartis

[Hafizur Rahman]

Hi Alain Hsiung,
Many many thanks for ur suggestion.
I will try to follow ur suggestion.

[Ricardo Polero Baraldi]

Dear Alain
Excelent score
One more question: How you solve the client tier ? I think in use Controller strategy (use some patterns) that can be use for Web and swing clients. My problem is I always thing in code, so I try to reflex this in the sequence diagram, putting all the sub-omponent of the pattern on it.
Did you just put as component "GUI Layer" and them explain how this thing work or show every component inside GUI component? And the security , just said "use JASS" or explaind all ?
Thanks in advance

[Luca Vent]

Hello everybody,

First of all...congratulations Alain for your great score in scea certification!!! :-)

I can't go on developing my project because I have understood some
points of the assignement. I have posted my doubts in topic "HELP: travel agents and new java application":

https://coderanch.com/t/152828/java-Architect-SCEA/certification/HELP-travel-agents-new-java

Can someone help me please?

Thanks a lot in advance!!

Luca