Harsha Yadalam

Hello Authors,

I have been trying out ESB for the past week on tomcat. I wanted to know if you have any advantages in using JBoss for ESB rather than tomcat. Also, do you discuss about ESB in your book ?

Thanks with Regards,
Harsha Yadalam

Vaithyanathan,

Thanks for the wishes. I have just downloaded the Part II requirements but am yet to start. This month looks very hectic for me at work. So I think I would be starting Part II only next month, we could have a lot of discussion once you are back.

Thanks,
Harsha

Hi Harsha,

congrats! Great Score!!!

Do the questions come categorized, e.g. first all EJB, then pattern, then i18n, then security and so forth,
or do the questions come all mixed in no particular order?

D.

David,

The questions do not come categorized. They are all mixed up.

Thanks,
Harsha

Yes you are right, a segment is a portion of the itinerary. If you see the business domain model, one itinerary corresponds to 1 or more segments.

Thanks,
Harsha

Hi Harsha,

Do you mean that besides I have to know the design pattern of GOF, I also have to know the additional pattern in EJB pattern book ?

Thanks.

KH

It is not a must to know the additional patterns in EJB Design Patterns book but I thought it was helpful in understanding the typical usage of the different EJBs and how best we can use them in different scenarios.

You need not go into the details of the patterns but a high level knowledge would certianly help.

Thanks,
Harsha

Hi Harsha,

I've a couple of basic question. Would be highly glad if you answer them.

1. What is the best book to use for SCEA, or the books that you specified and the links you gave are sufficient.
2. How much time do you think must be given for preperation before starting taking mock exams and them final exam.
3. If you can share more information, would be great.

Thanks
Vishal

Vishal,

1. There are only two study guides for SCEA at present I guess. The one by Mark Cade and Simon Roberts does not cover all the topics present in the exam. You need to read a lot more than just the book. I have not read the one by Paul Allen, Joseph Bambara but I have heard it has too many errors in them that makes them less dependable.

I would say read the book by Cade followed by a good book on GOF patterns and EJB as I had mentioned in my posting.

Please read through the links given by Vaithyanathan. They provide information about all the topics not covered in the books.

2. I would say around 2 months for reading the books and the notes and give around 2 weeks for the mock tests and final preperation before the exam.

Please feel free to ask me if you have any other questions. I would be more than happy to help.

Thanks,
Harsha

Harsha

Is a seperate preparation needed for EJB questions for SCEA. Are the questions similar to SCBCD.

Thanks

-- Ravi

Ravi,

I am not aware of SCBCD exam questions as I had not taken it. A couple of my friends said that the preperation for SCBCD exam was more at the code specific level like which methods appear in which classes etc, while SCEA is more at a conceptual level like, will you be able to use Session beans for these, which do you think would benefit CMT or BMT in a given situation. But I think your SCBCD preparation would help you a lot for SCEA.

Please make sure you are very clear about passivation, pooling etc. and the right use of the transaction mechanisms like Required, Supports etc.

Thanks,
Harsha

Thanks for all your wishes. I took almost 2 and half months to prepare for the exam.

I initially prepared for all the required topics and once I felt comfortable I booked for the test giving myself 3 additional weeks for the mock tests.

I would also like to suggest to read some general architecture books for e.g., J2EE Architect's Handbook to gain overall knowledge of architecture.

Thanks,
Harsha

Hi All,

I would like to share the good news that I successfully cleared SCEA Part I with 95%.

Here is the break down of my score.

Concepts................ 100%
Common Architectures ... 83%
Legacy Connectivity..... 100%
EJB..................... 100%
EJB Container Model .... 100%
Protocols............... 100%
Applicability of J2EE... 66%
Design Patterns ........ 100%
Messaging............... 100%
Internalization ........ 100%
Security ............... 100%

I would like to thank this forum and the yahoo group scea_j2ee for helping me out with so much information. The links provided by Vaithyanathan Sundaram were very helpful. Thanks Vaithya for the links. Also please be sure to go through atleast a couple of study notes to be sure that you covered all the topics required.

The links to Vaithyanathan's posting is

https://coderanch.com/t/153238/java-Architect-SCEA/certification/Passed-scea-part-comments

The exam was at a very conceptual level and it is independent of specifics like EJB version etc. I think some of the questions had very simple choices thus helping me in eliminating the wrong choices easily. The exam also did not have any confusing questions like some of the ones we found in mock exams. So if you are clear with the concepts, then you are good to go.

With respect to time, I had atleast 15 mins to spare in the exam, but I would like to mention that I used to finish the mock exams in 45 mins max.

The model of the questions match with the mocks but the questions are totally different. However the mocks are really helpful to understand where u stand.

The study materials I had used were

Sun certified Enterprise architect study guide by Cade's book
Mastering EJB 2 - very important
EJB Design Patterns - make sure you know all the patterns
Design Patterns GOF
EJB best practices from http://www.precisejava.com

Pete Morgan's - http://www.sarahandpete.com/work-stuff/SCEAexamnotes.pdf
Ramu notes from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scea_j2ee/files/
SCEA Quick referecnce.doc from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scea_j2ee/files/ by Chris Broecker
John Wetherbie notes - http://stephane.weber1.free.fr/SCEA/Notes/John_Wetherbie_Notes.txt

http://www.javaqueries.com with its 6 mock exams
http://javacoding.net/certification/scea/index.html

Well, I am off to Part II and III. Thanks for all the help and best of luck to all the new test takers.

Thanks,
Harsha Yadalam

Arunkumar,

The questions in the exam are not based on any specific version. The questions are at a very high level testing ur conceptual understanding of the subject. For e.g., you should be clear as to why pooling or passivation is required and how it is done etc.

Thanks,
Harsha

Along,

I was also confused why option e was not included in the correct answers. I searched and found that option e is right. Hence I went ahead with the assumption that the mock exam had the wrong answers.

Thanks,
Harsha

Along,

The connectionPool (for a specific database) class is a singleton which maintains a set of connections. For e.g. these could be maintained in a hashmap instance variable.

Whenever you want a connection you must access the same connectionPool instance (singleton) which could give you a connection object from the hashmap. The singleton pattern ensures that you access the same instance always.


With respect to your message regarding the defintion of singleton

"The Singleton does not just create a single instance it can also be used to create a variable number of instances of a class."

This just implies that you could either have a single instance or a fixed number of instances based on your requirements. In this case you only have 1 instance of a connection pool for a given database.

Vaithiyanathan,

Thanks for the inputs. I would surely bug u with more of my questions.

Thanks,
Harsha

I know this is a very repeated question but anyway I would like to ask you as you had taken the exam most recently. Are the questions more specific about technology like method definitions and locations or was it more at a higher layer ?

I would like to know if I am ready for the test and I thought the mock tests were a good indicator. If the questions are not similar to them then do you suggest some ways of how I could determine if I am done with my preparation ?

Congratulations

I have been following your postings for some time. They have been very helpful.