James J Zhang

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since Mar 06, 2004
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Recent posts by James J Zhang

I have overall 13 years of work experience but 11 years as IT professional.

The first two years I was an accountant and manager for a bank in China.
My roles chaged a lot later. Such as PC assistant, AIX and Unix adminstractor, Informix and Oracle DBA, Delphi and C++ developer, PHP and ASP web page designer.

Started my java Journey in 1999. At that moment I created applets for PHP pages. In 2001 I turned to use JSP and servlet rather than LAMP. I took the SCJP exam in 2001 mainly used it for preparing my immigration to Canada. Because I have a BA degree in finance but I claimes I am a programmer. Two years later, I passed SCEA. That helped me to get hired as software architect by Teradata Canada. I am early player of JPA and JSF. Used to be good in JSF component design. I lowered my title to be principal engineer when I got into Oracle last year. I think I am developer more than else right now.
I passed. Actually I never fail a single prometric exam. However, I regret that I have taken this beta. Upgrade test only costs $100 and only needs to fulfill one multi-choice exam.

But this test is better, should be more valuable than SCEA.
I passed too. Moving on to Part II, which suppose to be easier to me.
Sun Java Enterprise Studio is free.
SCEA 5 is a great upgrade to previous version. I had taken SCEA in 2003. Although I have gained more architectual experiences within these years, I still feel some of question are challenging to me. Because I have depth knowledge in Java WS, JSF, JPA and previous exam experience, I didn't take any technical readings to prepare this time.

The new exam covers more senarios than before, such as data warehouse based JEE application. The test shows equally repect to all technologies. Nothing is better than another without specific circumstances. As an software architect, it's our duty to choose the right solution to solve specific requirement, rather than simply picking one only based on its popularity. Less J2EE development details were tested, after all this is not the exam for developer's role.

Because there were more senario based questions, of course there were more chances leading to ambiguity. Sometimes I was strugglling to figure out the real intention of the question. My poor english forces me reading twice on most questions and answers. That left me less time thinking. Luckly I could finish them all.

I spent 4.5 hours in a small test room with 30C degree in temperature. The air condition was broken that day. Although I have brought a bottle of water with me, it's not allowed to bring it in. As someone said, beta test is NOT FREE.
June 3, Toronto, Canada
Those questions were quite easy but horrible in amount. I felt they tortured my butt rather than brain.
Thank you everybody, many friends like you are encouraging me keep on.
To beinners:
Actually, when I had downloaded the assignment, I don't know where is the entrance too. I just read the requirement again and again. At last, I asked my self if this is a developer certificate assignment, what should I do. So I choosed to analyse business objects first. I mean, to draw class diagram is the first step. There are lots of details to think about: How many business objects are needed, what's the relationships of them, is there any trinary-relation in the diagram,...,. the second step is to enrich the class diagram. I filled many necessary methods, attributes and stereotypes in classes(this is important for drawing sequence diagram).
I think you must find I lost 10 points in component diagram, although I am not successful in this part, I still like to share my experience. When I design component diagram, I revers-engineered the pet store. That gave me many suggestions. I realised a flexible architect must be consist of shared and decoupled components. In fact I had thought too much to be good. When I assumed flight inquiry might be the most used function, I even deliberately designed a complex flight search engine and cache to accelerate the system performance.
As to the sequenct diagrams, it just a routine, you just need obey the UML specification.
If you are beginner in architect, you should be confident. When you passed part I, you almost read all books you need. In fact, I only reviewed the UML Distills when I took part II. Read the requirements carefully, some requirements are not told you directly, they are hidden, you have to extract them out. And think about questions deeply and broadly. At last, you will find the pass score is not hard to reach as you think. If you expect get a proud score suck as 9x%, I am not an eligible candidate to bla-bla-bla.
I am waiting your seccess.

[ March 07, 2004: Message edited by: Andrew Monkhouse ]
I have to admire the SUN appraiser,cause my score just reflect my ability of different areas.
AS a senior programmer(developer), I felt class diagram is quite easy to me.
Beacuse of lacking architecture practice, I didn't satisfy my component diagram when I uploaded it. But I didn't know why. Now I think it's too complex and chaos.
I had some trouble when I used Rational Rose drawing sequence diagrams. That might be why I lost 1 score in sequence diagrams.
Class Diagram (44 maximum) .......................... 44
Component Diagram (44 maximum) ...................... 34 Sequence/Colloboration Diagrams (12 maximum) ........ 11
Maybe I am a beginner in architect and have many years' experience in Oracle, I felt Oracle DBA professional certificate is easier than SCEA.
Next,I will aim my target to Oracle DBA Master certificate.
Two week age, I immigrated to Toronto Canada. Due to my poor english, it's hard to get a IT professional job. Now,I am facing the rainiest days of my life.
Anyway, good luck to me and to you all.