Passed Part I of SCEA 5 with 96% - invite advice for parts 2 and 3

[P Das]

Passed the part I of the exam; there was some hitch with my name having been mis-spelt; cooling my heels over the assignment after having submitted the 'Quotation' for part 2. Sun does not respond.

Going through some of my own architectures that I had done for clients. Can some experienced people give advice on the following?
1) What exactly I need to do in respect of part 2? Only give a few UML diagrams (Class, Component, Package, Sequence)? It appears so from one post around 2003. However, things might have changed now.

2) What is the level of detail required in part 2?

3) How to expedite Sun's sending me links (or some other instrumentality) to register for part 2, pay required fees, and download assignment?

En passant: the questions were quite easy: not lengthy and only thing needed was to keep cool and time for revision.

Cache: The drag and drop questions suck: you cannot place the pieces quickly. I had wasted a lot of time on them and there I lost marks, presumably.

[deepak adlakha]

Congrats

Can you please share what all resources you refered part 1.

all the best for part 2 and part 3.

[Joe San]

Congrats!

[SaritaN Gupta]

Hey, Congratulations!!! It's quiet an achievement.

I am just a newbie thinking of starting this certification.
Could you please guide me for the preparation to get through in first attempt.

[P Das]

Sure; first thing is to look up in this blog site for SCEA resources. Then take your own time to familiarize with them, which should ideally be complemented by your work experience, which was my case.

The questions were not difficult at all, except the d-n-d ones: they were not difficult by content but by their stubborn ways to slip back to their original place even after repeated attempts. Another difficulty is that the test center would refuse to give you paper. So be wary.

[SaritaN Gupta]

Thanks for the input, Das. Really appreciate it.
I have been doing it, getting the feel of it from SCEA forum and also collect the reference material.It gets after a while, coz of the numerous resources for the study material.

Would you be kind enough to post what reference material you used? I am sure it's your grey matter more than the contents in the books but still it would be helpful to get to a single point start.

[P Das]

Glad to offer any kind of assistance that could possibly of help.

First, you need to plan various aspects: EJB 2.x + 3.0 (useful only for SCEA 5, until, say, 10/2010); Patterns (GoF, J2EE, which is a misnomer, they should change it to JEE patterns, Enterprise Integration, Security, Anti-patterns, and basic principles like Liskov etc.), Messaging, Architecture, etc.

Now you know, from your experience as a JEE Architect or Senior developer, how you have come across situations and used patterns to resolve them. For example, Value List Handler is often used to make fast queries possible. Try bridging the gap between your experience and the study material. Then it would be much more effective that keeping them in separate compartments, in my humble opinion.

Last thing you could do is to accustom yourself to the test by taking some mock tests; however, I cannot recommend any. Probably, it would be ok for those who are more experienced to publish some mock questions through this forum. I invite opinions from the Sheriff of this thread before attempting to do so. However, this would be better if one exercises self discipline since one is not allowed to disclose the contents of the real SCEA test. If my proposal is accepted, Javaranch could help many certification aspirants.

[Deepak Bala]

Congrats Das . Thanks for sharing your views

[SaritaN Gupta]

Great input, Thank you!

[Rahul Mishra]

Thanks for your inputs.

However, you left me with a curiosity when you said...J2EE patterns is a misnomer...and they actually include Enterprise Integration Patterns, Security Patterns,etc...

Are you emphasizing that one needs to be conversant with the EAI patterns as documented by Martin Fowler ( i know the J2EE patterns make references to them in the related patterns section but there is so much more to EAI patterns), additionally for SecurityPatterns..would you recommend a read of CoreSecurityPatterns for Part 1?


Thanks

[Samir Kureshi]

Congrats....

Can you suggest books for JSF? What are % of questions from JSF?

Thanks,
Samir

[Pavan Shahi]

Congrats

Will you please help me to find Mikalai Zaikin notes pdf or doc version.

[Juan Pablo Crossley]

P Das wrote:Passed the part I of the exam; there was some hitch with my name having been mis-spelt; cooling my heels over the assignment after having submitted the 'Quotation' for part 2. Sun does not respond.

Going through some of my own architectures that I had done for clients. Can some experienced people give advice on the following?
1) What exactly I need to do in respect of part 2? Only give a few UML diagrams (Class, Component, Package, Sequence)? It appears so from one post around 2003. However, things might have changed now.

2) What is the level of detail required in part 2?

3) How to expedite Sun's sending me links (or some other instrumentality) to register for part 2, pay required fees, and download assignment?

En passant: the questions were quite easy: not lengthy and only thing needed was to keep cool and time for revision.

Cache: The drag and drop questions suck: you cannot place the pieces quickly. I had wasted a lot of time on them and there I lost marks, presumably.

Great job P Das, the important thing about the second part it's to put the level required to explain the solution of the problem, if you put too much detail the solution will be hard to understand, don't forget to include patterns references and things like that, that will clean your designs and will let the examiner to understand what you are explaining,

Just ask yourself, am I going into too much detail? is this really helping the design or is distracting from the main solution? as somebody else said... practice the KISS method.

[P Das]

Hi Pablo,

Great! I was really a bit confused; your guidance is appreciated.

For some others:

1) EAI patterns like Guaranteed Delivery are so pervasive that we have to deal with them day in and day out: a certification aspirant can hardly ignore them. Same thing with Security and other (anti) patterns. IMHO, if you wait more, the exam will be more inclusive (and tougher), since I heard that earlier SCEA was confined to only GoF patterns and simpler in many ways.

2) I don't know too many books on JSF; hope, someone else could help.

3) I am sorry about Mikhail's notes; can someone help uploading it somewhere (e.g. with google docs) and providing a public link through this forum, which could benefit many, even if they don't go for certification. Are they not available now? Hope, there is no voilation on distributing those notes, which drew heavily on other standard material in form and content, while being a one stop shop for many topics.

3) I do not know if I can talk about the weight of different topics in SCEA exam openly. Probably, someone from Sun, who is also member of this forum can take this up.

Regards