Keith Rieck

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since Dec 12, 2008
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Recent posts by Keith Rieck

Well, a full JEE5 app server would contain a servlet container and also an EJB container. Physically they'll be in the same box, but it may be useful to consider them separate tiers.

There's no official list of tiers, so you can decompose your design in any way that would be useful. Maybe it's important for a design to have a cache between the application code and the database. It might be useful to consider the cache as a separate tier, whose physical location is determined later.
I think this terminology is left-over from Sun's Suntone architecture. In this concept, Sun organized a design on three dimensions: Layers, Tiers, and Systemic Qualities.

Systemic qualities are the non-functional requirements, such as the big seven topics tested on the SCEA exam: scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security.

Tiers are major logical and physical components through which processing passes, such as client, web server, app server, database, etc.

Layers are design components grouped by level of abstraction. The bottom layer might be hardware. The operating system might be a layer on hardware. Sharable libraries might be a layer on that, then the app server on that, then EJBs on top.
I was pretty happy with Poseidon. It's not free, but a three month subscription cost only $15. It runs on my Macs and Linux at home as well as the PCs at work.
When preparing for part 1, I purchased the ePractice exams from the Sun Web Learning Center. These were better than nothing, but surprisingly low quality considering the source.

For the part 2 project, I took about six weeks, which was more than necessary. The project was closer to what I do for my job, so I didn't find it difficult. I used Poseidon to draw the UML.

I took the part 3 essay test immediately after submitting my project.
14 years ago
If you don't receive any contact within 8 weeks of taking the test, then you should contact Sun to ask about your grade status (who2contact@sun.com). I recently learned that the grading of my assignment was done in February, but they didn't send my certificate out until after I had pinged them in April.

As for actual grades, I'm holding out hope that we'll eventually see them in the Prometric certification database. Folks who've passed the old J2EE test reported that they got real grades back. The certification database shows grade breakdowns for my Developer's test.
It's got a gold-ish seal. The package also contains a lapel pin and a plastic wallet card identifying you as a "Sun Certified Professional".
14 years ago
I'm very happy to say that I received my "welcome package" today, with my certificate and cool SCEA member card. The Cert Manager database is still messed up though, so I have no idea what grades were.

Thanks to everyone on this forum. This site has been a great source of information. In case anyone is interested in reading my notes, they are online at http://architecture.webhop.org/ .

For those working on part 2, I can say that I did use EJBs, but did not use JSF. I used Stripes for my presentation layer. For UML, I paid for a 3 month subscription to Poseidon.
14 years ago
I have the same status, with a "P" but a score of zero for part 3. I had been assuming that this meant that grading on the part 2 assignment hadn't been completed.

Has anyone seen an action score in the certification manager for their SCEA 5 exam?
I'm afraid that most of the mock questions out on the net are poor examples of what the SCEA requires for JEE 5 knowledge. Most of the mock tests I've seen dwell on trivia questions about EJB 2.

The SCEA exam doesn't require an intimate knowledge of the APIs and low-level details, but you will absolutely need to know all the general concepts, properties, and behavior of EJB 3 development. I read EJB 3 in Action prior to taking the test. It is a good source of what you need to know.

I've put my own SCEA notes out on the web: http://architecture.webhop.org/

As of yesterday, my test history says the same thing, even though I wasn't expecting a grade for a couple of weeks.

However, it just says "Part 3", which is the essay portion. And, there's no score yet. Can we assume that we've passed the Part 2 project?
15 years ago
I took the Java Developer certification a couple years ago, which required a project and then an essay administered at Prometric.

The essay was just simple questions about your design choices. I got the impression that the essay was an honesty check, to verify that you were the person who really did the project.

I haven't finished my SCEA part 2 project yet, but I expect that the essay will be similar.