Kuhni Baert

So finally it's over. Took me 2 years from the mandatory course, learning and taking the exam for Part one, and eventually the assignment and essay, mostly b/c I had a lot of long blocks in between where I totally suspended my work on the certification. If you have the appropriate amount of spare time and motivation, take my advise and try to go trough with the certification path more disciplined and faster than I did, and you probably spend much less time in total.

My Tips for Part 1 can be found here: https://coderanch.com/t/645529/java-Architect-SCEA/certification/Cleared-OCMJEA-Exam-Preparation-Tips

As for the assignment I had the "Gemstone international" thing and there were not big surprises. It helped me really to actually build at least some parts of the system under design (which is also what I do in my real work). As tools I simply used google docs and pasted screenshots from Enterprise Architect for the UM parts, and later exported the whole thing as HTML, which was most efficient. Took about 4 weeks until I got my results, probably I provided more text and diagrams than atually necessary.

For the the essay questions there were also no big surprises besides what you can read in the well known books and sources. Well, expect that the software crashed short before my time limit ended and left me quite horrified, but fortunately the lady from the test center was able to restore my session on another PC. I think I'm not supposed to reveal much further details. Suffice it to say that I'm quite happy with the result, and that I finally reached the apex of the Oracle Java Certification Path, as I'm also not planning to do any more of the Expert Certification.

Good luck to those who are still in the process - you will do it!

TK

I took "Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Using UML" prior to the assignment which is definitively useful as you're supposed to produce a lot of UML diagrams in the assignment part. Of course the content is nothing you couldn't teach yourself with books and internet resources and hardly justifies the costs, but the same applies to most other training and there's no getting around the mandatory course requirements anyway! And if you're lucky and still find a "real" training that requires your physical presence, so you get the chance to meet interesting people and have some nice chats on IT topics and beyond.

T.

Thanks a lot, I had exactly the same problem and was already kind of afraid I would have to download a new assignment and all the previous work was in vain :-) The whole interaction process does not seem to be very intuitive, I doubt it was ever reviewed in the last couple of years.

Thanks a lot - I was confused as well about how to download the assignment. It's quite sad that so much has passed since your post, yet the process is still as user-unfriendly as it was 6 years ago!

Hi,

just cleared above exam with 83% and wanted to share some resources. After having abandoned the preparation at the beginning of 2014 I restarted studying ~ 6 weeks ago, mainly on weekends. I also took other JEE exams in the previous years and usually scored >95% with equal preparation time, so I would consider this exam to be significantly tougher compared with the others (or maybe I'm getting old), mainly as the answers to a lot of scenarios are often not that obvious and you really have to watch out for keywords and rely on familiar questions from mock exams.

- Read OCM Java EE 6 Enterprise Architect Exam Guide (Exams 1Z0-807, 1Z0-865 & 1Z0-866) (Oracle Press)
This is a quite new book published half a year ago and one of the few that focuses on the recent JEE6 Version of the exam. If you only want to purchase one item for preparation, buy this one as it covers all topics in detail and also comes also with a test software (though it's quite basic an only provides 120 questions). However I would recommend to purchase at least one of the following simulators:

- Epractize Mock Exam http://www.epractizelabs.com/certification/oracle/ocmjea-6/mockexam.html
Also recently upgraded to Java EE6. Definitively recommended as it provides a huge amounts of questions and trains you on what to focus on, even though some solutions are rather ambiguous or even questionable and the study material is not of the same quality as a decent tutorial or book. They seem to have a permanent 50% discount so it's also good value for money. Note that it requires Windows!

- http://www.whizlabs.com/oracle-certified-master-java-ee-6-enterprise-architect/ocmjea6-practice-tests/
Similar concept, but only browser based (which might be an advantage if you don't run Windows or work on multiple devices, but the performance is sometimes weak - maybe they should take the OCMJEA exam themselves :-)). Less value for money compared with Epractize and less questions, but still a good investment, especially since I think that answering as much questions as you can get is the main key to pass the exam - even if you read all recommended books and have a lot of daily work JEE experience.

- http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Enterprise-Architect-Study-Guide
The legendary Ceide / Sheil book which - despite it has never been "updated" to the most recent version of the exam - is still a valuable (and rather easy) read to get you started in the preparation phase.

- Some notes and tips from a friendly chap who also passed the exam http://www.andresolarte.com/2014/06/passing-java-ee-6-enterprise-architect.html

- Real World Java EE Patterns from Adam Bien
A useful book and partly covered by the exam but most of the patterns are very well summarized in "EE 6 Enterprise Architect Exam Guide", so I would consider it optional.

I'm now looking forward to a relaxing vacation and plan to start the assignment (Part II) afterwards.
Good Luck!
Till

By the way, in Java Web Service Up and Running book, are there any chapters / sections I should skip? Since this book is not designed for this exam, if there are some sections that the exam won't cover, please let us know which sections.
Also, does RMH's J2EE web service book helpful?

Hi Himai,

I think while there's quite some exam stuff not sufficiently covered in the Java Web Service Up and Running book, vice versa there's not very much you can actually skip, expect maybe chapters 6 and 7.
But you also have to consider that there are also a lot of pages with long code samples, some of which not even written in JAVA, and while these certainly provide interesting ready to run examples, you probably won't examine very line but just download the sourcecode and focus on the parts that really address webservice related topics. The remaining 200something pages should be a rather quick read compared with the PDF based study guides. As for RMH's J2EE web service book, I havn't read it since at some point I had the feeling that my brain was sufficiently filled up with information with little space left for new pieces of knowledge :-)

Cheers

Just received my exam report and passed with 86% after a month of studying with an average of approx 1 hour per day.
I used the following resources:

- Kalins JAVA Webservices up and running
A good and not too complicated book to get you started if you're new to the topic, with a lot of example code. It does not (and does not claim to) focus on the exam, so don't expact every objective to be covered.
Overall i would consider it complemental but not mandatory for your studies.

- EPractize Labs Exam Simulator
Apparently the only piece of exam software that really focuses on the new version of the exam. The concept is that you have basic, advanced and rewind sessions that should prepare you for each topic,
each of which associated with a couple of multiple choice questions to verify your results, plus some mock and a final exam simulation. A good concept I think, but overall i considered the content of session material
rather disappointing and not nearly sufficient to give you a broad insight on each topic. There are almost no external references, and especially in the reviews i found it annoying that the explanations why a
particular answer is correct or not sometimes often just rephrased the correct answer (logically equivalent with "B is correct b/c it is the right answer, hence the others are wrong).
Having said this, I still recommend it since on the pro side the questions really very closely mirror the real exam questions and just but memorizing the correct and wrong answers of the 700something questions you
should significantly increase your chances of passing the exam. Since they seam to have a permanent 50% discount, compared with the exam vouchers costs the additional 40$ were well spent in my case.

- Mikalai's notes on SJCWSD5 and OCEJWSD6
I has been mentioned multiple times in this forum and i agree: For lack of a good book that focuses on the exam (i wonder why there's still none around), these are a must unless you have too much time and want to
compile everything yourself based on the myriad specifications related to the exam. Note that you indeed need to study both tutorials (~250 pages in total) since there are complemental. Also note that Mikael also
offers a pdf based quiz that covers the topics of both tutorials for a small reasonable feed, which i also recommend, if only to show your appreciation for the work he put into the free ones. Thanks Michael!

- Ivan Kristian Notes
I read about this alternative tutorial short before the exam was scheduled and was shocked first - not yet another 400+ pages to study! But he included a lot of graphics and code examples, so the 400+ pages rather
feel like, well, 300+ pages. Of course a lot of content is overlapping with Mikaklai's tutorials, but i learned also some new stuff resp. understood some topics better just b/c he explained them in a different way.
So i didn't regret that I spent the last day to walk thru this tutorial, which must've been a lot of work also in terms of layout. Ivan could probably easily sell this as a book to desperate JWSD students, instead
he's giving it away for free, for which I'd like to thank him.

That's it, and while you probably don't achieve 100% with only these reources, it should be more than enough to get you a passing score.

Re the exam, I was relived not to find any questions on JAXR, UDDI and the WSDL 2.0 component model, all of which i more or less skipped. Also for multiple choice questions the correct answer count was displayed
and there were less than 10% of the questions I really considered mean and had to guess (which is probably whethere the missing 14% originate from).

Good luck!

Till

well done - it's going to be hard to beat this score in your next exam

Just passed SCBCD 5 with 95% and just in time (2 days prior to the voucher expiration, with roughly 1-2 month actual preparation time).

Most of the questions were fair from my point of view, apart from a few brainers where i head to guess (and i assume those are the ones I missed).

Some time ago I've read "Enterprise Java Beans 3.0" which is IMHO a good starter for the entire EJB 3.0 topic but doesn't really focus on the exam!
I was clearly missing a book such as "Head first Servlets and JSP" for SCWCD that guides you through the preparation w/o taking things too serious,
and consdering the myriad IT books published each month i'm really surprised that apparently nobody composed such a potential bestseller for SCBCD 5 so far.

I've spent the most time on Enthuware EJBPlus 5 which was really helpfull (especially the Leitner mode which used almost exlusively after i discovered it) and i can only recommend it - it's also reasonable priced.
On the contrary, SUN's E-Practice exam (the 2nd tool I bought) wasn't that much value for money. They bascially grant you access to a pretty old fashioned web interfacte with 2 online tests (static questions) for one year. The explanations are some times not very helpful (you're often encounter one-liners that mainly refer to the specification such as "(A) is right see 1.2.4; (B) is wrong b/c A is right", and there are not many features other then taking the entire test and evaluating the results.

Apart from ejbplus i've studied Mikalai Zaikin's SCBCD 5.0 Guide and i think it pretty much sums up most relevant parts of the CORE + JPA specification. Thanks, man!
Those who prefer reading paper should note that there's a printable version available on javaranch (which id discovered a bit too late).

To sum it up: Get EJBPlus and see to get all questions into the learned status, spend some time with the zaikin guide and if you still have time left, scan the core and JPA specs at least briefly (yes - that's the boring part!

cheers + good luck to all SCBCD aspirants !!!

Thanks mainly to "Head First Servlets and JSP", which was both a fun read and very helpful (besides stuying the servlet API and practising with my own sample webapp). Next goal would be SCBCD, but only in if the authors release a new 3.0 compliant version of "Head first EJB". any inside news?