Hi Victor,
Initially I read the SCEA Study Guide (by Allen & Bambara) but I think much more useful than that was the
JEE 5 Tutorial on the SUN website. The book is for the 310-051 exam but I still used it for the topics relevant to 052.
I didn't read any book on EJB 3 but I suggest
you should. I just read up online on EJB3 vs EJB2 but if you have the time, read the EJB3 book.
I can't tell you what the questions were, but make sure you're extremely familiar with all the 'capabilities' in architecture (scalability, reliability etc.) Not just what they mean but try and think as much in real life scenarios as possible. It's not enough to know what they mean. Try and keep thinking about what all you need to do if you wanted to improve an existing architecture with respect to any of these capabilities.
Remember, it's a SUN exam, so you'll need to be reasonably aware of their technologies like
JSF, JAXP, JAXB,
JSP etc. Make sure you're very well versed with JSF. And even though it's an architect exam and they wont' ask you coding questions, it's helpful to play around with it (if you haven't already done so) just to get a better understanding of it. I've never worked with JSF and I guess I could've benefited a bit had I got my hands dirty with it but this is only if you have
alot of time, otherwise read about it in the JEE 5 tutorial and read the JSF book.
Read the Core J2EE
Patterns. Make sure you understand when they're used and what is the benefit of each one. This is very important.
I had made a list of things that I felt are important to read up on before the exam and coincedentally there were questions in the exam around most of this. I'll paste the list at the bottom of this msg.
Lastly, mock exams. I reckon the more you do the better it is. Because that's what'll teach you what you don't already know and also train you to pick up the right things from the questions and how to judge the best answer using either experience, process of elimination, gut feel, logic or all of them. Please make sure to read the questions carefully and the answers carefully too. Re-read them if necessary. I only bought the practice exams from the SUN website and found them to be extremely useful. I can't comment on Whizlabs or anything 'coz I never used them.
I hope this is somewhat useful. Any more things that I'll remember I'll write them in this thread. If you have any other questions then I'll try and answer those too.
Regards,
Nikhil
P.S. Things I felt were necessary to read up on:
business delegate pattern
jax-ws (this is important)
jaxr (don't need to know it's internals but just what it is)
jsf (Should know this very well)
expression language
ejb3.0 advantages (this is very important)
jaxb
jaxp
Java Persistence API (important)
SAAJ/Soap
JCA (important)
Java IDL
Service Endpoint Interface
JCE
JSSE
REST
JNLP