Wednesday, March 5, 2008

How to pass SCEA 5

I'm MCP, SCJP, SCBCD and now SCEA 5, when I took the SCEA 5 Beta, I was wondering if this will be as difficult or easy as the other ones, and it was very interesting just because Beta means "you will not have any help on, nobody took this test before and you will have only your knowledge with you".

Because of this I started this blog, to share my experience in this test and let you know the key elements you must be aware to pass this out.

Certification description

The certification is compound by 3 parts.

1. The first part is a multi choice exam just like the others, it will test your knowledge about JEE and Design patterns
2. The assignation is the second part, you will get an assignation which will be similar to a real life assignation, this means that you will face it as a real application should be faced.
3. The third part is the easy one if you did the assignation, they will ask you about some common decisions made during design time, like Authentication, authorization issues, security, scalability, maintainability, and so on. This part will be evaluated as part of the assignation, so you will not have to wait to pass the second part in order to start this one.

General Advice
If you think you are ready to pass this test, just ask yourself:

- Did I worked enough with Case Use , Sequence Diagrams, Class Diagrams, Deployment Diagrams, etc? if the answer is no, go and take some practice on this, I'm pretty sure you will not pass it if you don't have some experience about these topics. (you don't need to be a guru)
- Did you architect some solutions? were they successful solutions? scalable, maintainable, etc?

Part 1
The first part is easy, you must know the following topics (these are from the java certification page):

Scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security. These are very important and will be asked through all the test, you will have problems like: "How can you add new customers and keep the availability?" or "If you add a new layer you will lose in security, reliability, scalability or manageability?" (those are not exactly the answers, I'm not able to put the real ones in here)

Security. You will be asked for firewalls, protocols, etc. Its easy if you read about it.

Tiers. You will be asked about the advantages and disadvantages about two tier, three tier, n-tier, client-server. Remember, not always the n-tier is the best option, imagine you have a simple hello world application, will you create this with ejbs, db etc? be sure to take a look of this new post Two, Three, N-tier which one should I pick?

Messaging. You need to know how the JMS works, you will be asked for this, that's sure.

EJB. this test will be easy if you know EJBs and you already worked with them, GOOD NEWS: YOU WILL NOT SEE CODE IN HERE, yes... you will be asked about the life cycle, advantages, when to use Stateless, Stateful, CMT, BMT, etc, questions like: "will you use persistence to save the data in a Stateless or Stateful bean?", so be sure you create almost any JEE component in a sample and be sure how it works.

Web Tier. Here is the tricky part, you will be asked for JSF, JSP, Servlets, and will be little bit difficult if you didn't develop a web page, so... go and open your netbeans (or Eclipse) and start working in these concepts. I'm not sure why they ask the details of this, but they will. You will not find answers like: "Find the error in here ...", but you will be asked how can you use those technologies to solve some problems.

Patterns. Ok, here is the core of the test, you need to know the patterns described in the Blueprints guide, also the ones in the GoF, etc. The test does not ask too many questions about patterns, but its sure you will find some of them.

In addition, you can find some questions referring to CORBA, RMI, etc, so be sure to understand every term. If you have any further questions about the questions please let me know in the comments, I will try to answer it keeping care of the test disclosure.

Second Part

Once you get the result of the first part you will be ready for the practice test, so how it works?

You will get an assignment which you will download from a page Sun gives you, this assignment is private and its very difficult that somebody have the same (I think they must have a hundred of different assignments, but I'm guessing).

The assignment is compound by a description and a sort of Case Use you must solve, as the real life assignments it has description, domain model, requirements, and Case Use and its possible they have some errors, your job as architect is to detect those and write it down in your assumptions, for example if you get an assignment to do a check in a system for a hotel and you see that the case of use says something like: "The customer could ask for the check" you could assume the check will be in dollars, in this way you will not have to do a currency conversion. Or you could find something like: "The cat eats the dog at breakfast", and you will say "What a hell?, I think this is wrong my assumption is somebody did a mistake in here and it must be 'the dog eats the cat...' "

You must read very carefully the assignment, go to the bathroom, take a shower and go back on it, read it again and try to be sure you understood all the requirements of the system, if you fail to detect a requirement you will fail the test. Use your imagination to figure out how the steps in the Case Use works and how will your system is going to address these.

You will need to provide Class Diagram, Component Diagram, Deployment Diagram and your assumption list, also you will need to provide the sequence or collaboration diagrams (this will not influence your score, but will be a good way to get the other diagrams). Also you will need to provide a list of the top three risks you detected and how you managed them.

While you are trying to figure out how to solve your problem keep in mind the following: Scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security. These are the key points in the test, if your system architecture could lead to a performance problems then you will need to address that in your design.

Remember, Sun is asking you for the architectural design, not the detailed design, so keep in mind that to avoid any unnecessary detail. How do you know if your design is too detailed, I think you should be able to explain your design to your team in a 30 minutes meeting, if you went in too much detail the designers will not have any work to do.

The third part

Ok, this is the easy one, you will be asked for some of the decisions made in the previous step, how did you address the security, the scalability, etc. What is the tricky part in here?, take a look of all the questions before begin, when I took it I tried to answer the best I can, so I put all that comes to my mind, then when I moved to the next question... puff... they are asking for something I already answered in the previous question (and you don't have the copy/cut/paste option), so I needed to move back remove the unnecessary answer in the previous one and rewrite it in the next. The time flew and I only had 5 minutes to do a full review. So, go and read all the questions before begin.

If you have any further questions please let me know in the comments section, I will try to do another blog with those questions and answers.

67 comments:

Anonymous said...

HI Juan Pablo,

My name is Rania and preparing for the new SCEA 5, currently I'm working on part 1. now I'm studying webservices as they are included in the first part of the exam, and have Developing Java Web Services by Ramesh Nagappan, and wondering if I have to go over all the SOAP specifications and the Anatomy of a SOAP Message ?
Also I never worked with EJB, but did design and Architect many Web applications ( from 1 tier to
n-tier ). how I have to study EJB as I never use them in my current project and experience at work.
Any further advice on how to prepare for test part 1 of SCEA will be more then Welcome !

My Best Regards,
Rania
PS: I don't speak spanish :)

Cross said...

Hi Rania, about the WebService question you'll not be asked about the structure of a SOAP message, you need to know the general behavior of WS not the detail of it, you need to know that this will run as a part of a protocol named SOAP, which will run (generally ) over the 80 port, and could have security. In the test you will be asked if you will choose a web service, Session Bean, RMI or what and why to solve a particular problem (Example: If you are under a firewall and the only port you are able to use is 80, will you use RMI, Session Beans or WebService to provide...).
For the EJB part is far enough if you go, read and practice the tutorial in the java page, they will explain the main concepts and the life cycle you will need.
For the first part I suggest to get some mock exams (does not matter if they are from the previous version) , make a list of your weakness and study about those ones.
The book by Mark Cade Sun Certified Enterprise Architect J2EE it has the main concepts and its a very good start point.

I hope that help you.

JeffM said...

Hi there Juan

Which books do you recommend to prepare for Part 1 ?

Cross said...

Hi Jeff, I think the best one is the Mark Cade 's Sun Certified Enterprise Architecture for J2EE Technology Study Guide

Anonymous said...

Hola Juan Pablo,

Thank you very much for your prompt response and advices :)
For mark Cade book, yes I do have it, and I do Have the old wizlab mock test that cover SCEA old version not the new one.. but as you advised I'll try them just to have an idea about the exam.
For Webservices thank you very much for your advices, you know since a week I'm working on the book that I have (Developing Java Web Services ) and stick on Chapter related to SOAP, I’m getting board just leaning the details of SOAP. So now I did understand what you meant I have to concentrate more in the concept and the role of web services versus others.
For EJB, I did order a book to study on it , hope it'll help me … any advice ? do you have good link where I'll study the main part regarding these Topics ;
Scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security ?
Please any new advice will be much appreciated and again thank you very much :)
Muchas Gracias !!

Rania

Cross said...

Hola Rania, its a little bit hard to find book of EJB 3.0 oriented to the certification, the main advantage here is that the 2.1 and EJB 3.0 are the same in the terms of "Scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security" so all the books for 2.1 will be good for these topics in the 3.0, remember... the main difference between 2.1 and 3.0 is in the coding, deployment descriptors, etc. (off course there are several changes, but the test will not rely on these changes)

Anonymous said...

Hola Juan Pablo !

Thank you so much for your response :)
As you said I can study in either EJB 2.1 or 3, the book that I ordered ( don't yet receive it) cover EJB 3.0. Hope will learn from it at least what is necessary to pass the part 1 exam.

Your web site is so helpful for us that are preparing this big Exam SCEA. Thank you so much :)

Take care,

Rania

Cross said...

Hi Rania, I gone a put a new blog with detail explanation about some other certification topics, do you have any suggestion or maybe a problem with some other topic you want to discuss?
I'm thinking to write down a detailed explanation of some design patterns, but there are a lot of resources on these.
Other topic could be oriented to the part 2, but please let me know what are you interested in.

JeffM said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JeffM said...

I'm struggling a bit to find detailed information that addresses the following objectives :

Explain the advantages and disadvantages of two-tier architectures when examined under the following topics: scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security.

Explain the advantages and disadvantages of three-tier architectures when examined under the following topics: scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security

Explain the advantages and disadvantages of multi-tier architectures when examined under the following topics: scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security.

Any suggestions on reading material?

Anonymous said...

Hola Juan Pablo !

I just read your response now, so regarding any suggestion on others topics that you may write something that could help the users that come to your website and specially those are preparing the certification, let me find something interesting and I'll back to you with an new post with suggestion, ok :)

Thanks and Best Regards,
Rania

අයිතිකාරයා said...

Hi Cross,
I guess that is your name :) .

First of all I must thankful to you for this amazing post. This is the best post ever seen for SCEA 5.0.

But I have an doubt. You had recommenced Mark CAde's book for the preparation. I think that only covers J2EE instead of JAVA EE.

Do you think it is good for SCEA 5.0 as well?

Thanks

Cross said...

thx I really appreciate your words, the Cade's book is a good guide, but unfortunately you're right its for J2EE not JEE, I think it´s pretty close to the SCEA 5 questions, so you must read about EJB 3.0, and the changes between J2EE 1.4 and JEE 5 , then you will be ready to take the test.

අයිතිකාරයා said...

Thanks Cross for your valuable comments

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I trying to get The book by Mark Cade "Sun Certified Enterprise Architect". But it is not available in Chennai. Is it available in other cities in India? Also is there any site where I can buy eBook? Please let me know.

Thanks.
Sudhir

Cross said...

Hi Sudhir, the book was not in my country either, I bought it at amazon.com.

Anonymous said...

Are there really no UML questions on SCEA 5.0 part1?

UML was on previous SCEA objectives list, but I've noticed that it disappeared in SCEA 5.0 version.

Cross said...

As far as I remember the questions about UML was about Patterns, not directly UML... But, I think you should be ready to understand any UML diagram because the Patterns will rely on that. The second part is UML intensive and you will need to do a lot of diagrams.

Rashmi said...

Hi Cross,

Back again!

I am working on
Explain typical uses of web services and XML over HTTP as mechanisms to integrate distinct software components.

Though I did manage to get something on this topic and understand it, I could not find anything to test myself on. I was wondering if you have any collection of case studies or know any site for it...I was looking for the n tier architecture too.

Thanks
Rashmi

PS:- This is far better than the j2EE groups I joined, thanks a ton.

Cross said...

You problems you will face on the real-life and in the test are similar to this:

"Your customer requires that you integrate your system with an old legacy subsystem (created in C++), but this system runs in other physical offices and has a firewall on it. What will be your suggestion to solve this problem:

1. Use RMI to create a component in the legacy system.
2. Create a Web Service and call it from the application
3. Use Corba (IIOP) to communicate with the legacy system, because the legacy system is written in C++.
4. etc.
"

This is the kind of problems you need to solve, so you need to understand how the WS works and if you will be able to use it in this situation. Take care of the tricky questions in which you are not able to use WS because the customer does not have support to it.

Just remember something and you will be ok... the test will ask for your knowledge as Architect, Sun has another test to probe your Web Services knowledge, the kind of questions you'll find is "When to use it, and what challenges you will face when use Webservices as solution".

Hope this help you.

Anonymous said...

Juan Pablo. Very much appreciate the help you give us all.

Anonymous said...

Hi Juan Pablo,

I'm Rania, I did post before in yourt site if you remember ? hope yes !
I have question for you regarding EJB 3 in the Exam part 1 of SCEA.
what we have to know and understand for the exam for EJB and JPA (java persistence API). Do we have to master all details of Entities and their RelationShips (@oneToOne, @OneToMany, @ManyToMany..) and all the annotaion that Entities have in EJB 3 and the Mapping Entity Inheritance Hierarchies etc ...
what we have exactly to know and nderstand for the Exam regarding EJB ?
PLease if you can advice regarding this part on the exam will be very helpful and more then welcome :)

Thank in advance for your response !

Rania

Cross said...

Hi Rania, glad to hear from you... about EJB3 the questions you will face are basically about the behavior of the POJOs. You need to know that the new Entities are represented by a simple Bean with some annotations on it, and it replaces the deployment descriptor required in 2.1, you also need to know that the entities could have relationships with other entities as "One to Many", "Many to One" and "Many to Many", but they will not ask about the annotations but the concept.
You also need to know that the JPA will do the persistence of those POJOs.
If you read the EJB tutorial from sun you will be ok about the concepts, keep in mind they will ask about your knowledge as architect, so you'll answer these questions like an architect (not code).

Anonymous said...

Hola Juan Pablo,

I'm glad to read you too and have your feedback :)

Thank you so much for your prompt response, and you don't imagine how your advice are helping me to prepare for the first part of the exam SCEA. Thank you so much !

Please would you give me the link for the Sun Tutorial that you did mention for the EJB ? I do have a book from Apress but want to check out the tutorial from Sun and see what I have to take and learn from the link, so please if you can give me the link, and thanks in advance.

Also want to thank you for your post regarding Analysis of the Persistence Layer and your post for the one 2, 3 tiers. I did read them and really they are much helpful and well summarized, very good Job, Thanks :)

Waiting your response until then take care !

Rania

Cross said...

Hi Rania, here's the link for the tutorial Chapter 24 - Introduction to the Java Persistence API, take a good read of the whole Part V (Persistence). And, if you have time, do the samples, this will give you a good perspective of how the EJB3 persistence works.

Anonymous said...

Hi Juan Pablo,

Thank you very much for your help and the link that you provided. I hope in the exam there no much question regarding the Code, as there is a lot's of things to memorize in this JPA and persistence in general ...

Thank you again and Take care :)

Rania

Anonymous said...

Hi,
i need to know how to present java messaging service in UML terms.
thanks

Cross said...

Hi, UML does not have an specific artifact to represent a JMS component, it's a generic way to represent your architecture. A JMS is just a communication way between to components and it's asynchronous, in that way you must draw them as follows:

1. Sequence diagram: Just put an asynchronous message between your objects (an arrow with an empty head)
2. Class Diagram: If you implemented the receiver as a JMS Bean, then it's just a Class with an stereotype JMS MessageDriven Bean (or an implementation of MessageBean if you are talking 2.1)

hope this answer your question regarding UML JMS messages

Anonymous said...

Hi Cross,

Thank 4 ur response.

what about component diagrams.

How do JMS messages get displayed as an interface or direct.

Anonymous said...

Hi Juan,

Thanks a lot for your such an informative post.

Im starting to prepare for SCEA Part1. Im just wondering that Study guide which you suggested is for old exam. Is there any updated study guide available for new exam (CX310-052).

Kind Regards,
Ahsan

Anonymous said...

Hi all,

Just a question here. SCEA 5 has EJB 3.0 which has the Persistence API. So, do we still have questions on Entity beans or the latest Persistence API stuff?

Cross said...

Hi Meena, you could expect questions about the use of JPA, but I didn't see code in my test, so I don't think you will be asked "what is @entity for?", or something like that, you could expect questions like this: "If you need to persist the data coming from an E-commerce application, and the customer are aware about the performance, what strategy will you consider for persistence?"

But I recommend you to get a birdview of the JPA, Entities, POJO, etc. This will help you to give an accurate answer.

JeffM said...

What level of detail are they looking for in the following objectives :

1.Describe how the principle of "separation of concerns" has been applied to the main system tiers of a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition application. Tiers include client (both GUI and web), web (web container), business (EJB container), integration, and resource tiers.

2.Describe how the principle of "separation of concerns" has been applied to the layers of a Java EE application. Layers include application, virtual platform (component APIs), application infrastructure (containers), enterprise services (operating system and virtualization), compute and storage, and the networking infrastructure layers.

Cross said...

Hi JeffM, you could expect several questions around this subject, these are the key decisions you'll face on when you're designing a system, and you should know how to deal with all the layers involved.
For example, you should be prepared to questions like: "you will need to design an application to... blah blah blah. Which configuration should you pick: - Applets and EJBs for.. -JSP for the logic and EJB for... - EJB for presentation and JSP for business logic... etc" questions like that.
I hope that answered your question.

JeffM said...

Thanks.Would one expect questions relating to say why you'd go with plain old JSP instead of JSF?That sort of thing

Cross said...

I don't recall any question like those, but you should be prepared to solve them. Take a deep look into how JSF, Applets, servlets and plain JSP solve the problems, this should help you to figure out the answer for any of those questions. The questions are focused on "will you use servlets for presentation, for controller, for business objects?" that kind of things.
Good luck with your test, don't forget to tell us how was it.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I managed to clear SCEA Part I on first attempt. And you were right, no code but its definitely not straightforward. So, you do need to understand the scenarios fully to answer them. I thought I could do with more than 2 hrs for the exam though.

Anyway, any tips for part 2?

Thanks,
Meena

Anonymous said...

Could you share your idea of "top three risks"? Thank you very much.

Unknown said...

Hi Cross,
My name is Archer.I'm struggling with the SCEA5 part2.My assignment is Factory Homes,what about yours?
I'm looking for some template to follow,can you share your assignment with me?
MSN:java2_jl@hotmail.com

Cross said...

Hi Feng, congratulations for the first part, I encourage you to not share your assignment with anyone, or you could lost your efforts because Sun explicitly express the forbidden of this practice as part of the certification contract. My advice for the second part is to follow your knowledge about the UML diagrams, and try to keep them simple, you're not expected to do detailed diagrams.

Unknown said...

Thanks Cross. But about the risk list,I have totally no idear,can you give me some advices or guide books?

Cross said...

Hi Feng, must of the risks are related with the typical subjects: performance, security, maintenance, extensibility, and so on. In some cases you must sacrifice one over the other, and you must take that decisions in the real life, for example, sacrifice performance over maintenance, etc.
Those are the risks you must face on the test... and so you'll face in the real life.
If you ask me about "if you're going to develop a search engine website, what are the top 3 risks you will face and how will you deal with them?", there's no a correct answer, instead you could have a lot of wrong answers. But I will try to name 3 that comes to my mind: "Performance, multi-languages and extensibility", how will you deal with this three risks if you're trying to develop a google like site?

Unknown said...

Thx Cross!!!
I know your means.The risk is the thing which we secrifice in the architecture design.And which part we should sacrifice is depend on the application requirements.

Cross said...

Hi Feng, not always you will sacrifice something in your architecture, you just will address the problem in a different way. The architecture could change if the risks leads to a problem with your first approach. For example, if you are dealing with a bank application, one of the risks could be the security, you will create an architecture which leads you to an improved security design. (Not always you will sacrifice architecture in change for a risk).

Unknown said...

Juan Pablo, en las 3 partes de scea dan un diploma de aprobado o solo hasta pasar la última parte lo dan?.

Gracias, José Luis

Cross said...

Hola Jose Luis, solo te dan un certificado como SCEA, pero te dan un imprimible de que pasaste la primera parte. La segunda y tercera son dependientes una de la otra, si pierdes la 2da no tiene sentido la tercera, sin embargo si pierdes la tercera (que seria muy raro realmente) te llegaria un documento con los resultados de la segunda parte.

Unknown said...

Juan, y el inglés me imagino que será muy importante para la tercera parte?, porque por ejemplo en mi caso, yo lo leo perfectamente pero escribirlo sin ayuda de google o wordreference puede q me quede complicado.

José Luis

Cross said...

Hola José Luis, bueno pues la tercera parte creo que si requiere ingles escrito, ya que tu sustentas todo. Pero deberias llamar a Sun y preguntar, algunos examenes se pueden pedir en español, no estoy seguro de si este.

Ronak said...

Hi Cross,
The information that you have posted for SCEA is really helpful.
I just finished SCWCD and now want to pursue SCEA certification.
And I am starting to prepare for the Part 1 for SCEA.
Can you please suggest me few books for that ?

Thanks,
Ronak

Cross said...

Hi Ronak, thanks for your words I'm glad you like the post, as I said before the book that help me a lot is the one from Mark Cade Sun Certified Enterprise Architecture for J2EE Technology Study Guide but I think you would not find a single book that covers everything, that's an start point, but this book only covers the summary of each subject required in the test, so you would need to search in other books for the detailed information.

Unknown said...

Hello Juan Pablo, I'm Antonio Fornié. Hope you remember me from Javaranch forums.

Got some questions about objectives for SCEA5 part 1. Things not present in some of the recommended books, and things present that may no longer be included.

1º Do I have to study internationalization and protocols?

2º What about applets, and Java WebStart?

3º What should I know about JSF? For example, they may ask about when to use it. Well, when should I answer it's better not to use JSF? I guess people from Sun will say to use it always :)

Thank you very much.

Antonio

Cross said...

Hey Antonio, glad to see here!

Nice questions!, let me try to answer them:

1º Do I have to study internationalization and protocols?
R/ I think you should know how to implement it, and how to design the solution to be adaptable for any other country, but they will not required from you to put code or something like that. Must of the test must consider internationalization, but you could solve the problem with a ResourceBundle and that's it.

2º What about applets, and Java WebStart?

Yes, that's an important part of the test, as Architect you should know if you are using a gun to put a nail or you use a hammer for the same work, I mean, if you try to solve a very simple solution (Hello World) with a MVC, Session Beans, Facades, entities etc, you are going to face a problem. if you see that the solution is faily simple and you could solve it with an Applet then you should mention it.

3º What should I know about JSF? For example, they may ask about when to use it. Well, when should I answer it's better not to use JSF? I guess people from Sun will say to use it always :)

Hehe, the people from Sun expects that you solve the problem in the simplest way, off course, you should cover all the things about security, extensibility, etc., as advice you must follow the K.I.S.S. principle.

Hope this solve your questions, if not just let me know.

Unknown said...

Thank you very much once again.

After reading your answers I think that the "Assigment
Objectives" in the official page are far to explain well all subjects
included in the exam. It's easier thanks to people like you.

I've seen the book "Enterprise
Integration Patterns by Gregor Hohpe" in recommended resources from Javaranch for JMS. I know it's a really good book,
but do Sun really want me to read it for SCEA exam? In fact that book is not concerned about different
layers in an application, but integrating different applications.

Please, another question: they may ask me about EJB life cycle, right?
And may they ask about JSF life cycle too?

And the last one, about exam PART1: I've read about some recommended resources for SCEA exams, but the only one that doesn't seem to be obsolete is the JEE5 Guide. Is there any other? (for example I've just finished reading Mark Cade's Study Guide and it's very out of date to be used for the SCEA 5)

Thank you very much again.

Prashant said...

Hi Cross,

I really liked all the responses & thank you very much for your comments & suggestions. Those are really valuable.

I need some advice from you regarding taking this exam. I have 6 years of development experience in java/j2ee. Also finished executive MBA but I would like to remain on technical path with this business knowledge & newly acquired acumen. Do you think taking this exam will help me to project myself as Enterprise Architect with justifying EMBA.

I am confident about my Java knowledge & ability to design system. But not yet much experience in architecting. So am I justifying taking this exam at this stage.

Thanks a ton,
Prashant

Aditya Kiran said...

Hi,
How much time do we get to submit Part 2 of the exam. Is there any specific time limit?

thanks

Cross said...

Hi Digu, thanks for reading. As far as I remember you don't have any timeframe to send the part 2, you should check at the sun/oracle's website, maybe they changed the policies. good luck with your certification

Sancho said...

Hi,
i passed the first Part of the SCEA Assignment and now, i want to start part 2 (Factory Homes is my second part).
You mustn't give me your assignment, but it would be nice, if you can answer me some questions ;)
There are given UseCases in my exercise, is it my challenge to find more use cases or is it "only" my "job" to make a architecture(including sequence Diagrams, Class Diagrams etc.) of the given use cases?
It would be great, if you can answer me those questions.
Best Regards

Cross said...

Hi Sancho, glad to hear that you passed the first part, congratulations!,

Regarding your questions... you're supposed to work only in the given use cases, no more, try to keep it as simple as you can... for example, if the use case talks about a web service you must call try to avoid the non-functional issues around like "https"... "wss", etc. just solve the question been asked.

if you have any other question just let me know and I will do my best to help you.

vhariprakash said...

Hi ,

I want to take up SCEA.
As a starter please do advice me how to start up , prepare for the SCEA Part 1 .

Kind Regards
VHariPrakash

Cross said...

Hi VHariPrakash, The question is a little bit general, and I must say that depends on what you know, and what experienced you are in JEE, first read all the patterns you can (GoF is a good starter, Blueprints is also a good source of JEE patterns), try to put them in practice (create and solve the problem proposed by the pattern), take a look on internet and download some mocks, this will give you a clear sample of the questions and should point you in the right direction to prepare your own study guide.

Sancho said...

Hi Cross,
i'm thinking about using JSF or JSPs. In the assignment is mentioned, scalabilty is important, on that way it's better to use jsps, or not?
Can you give me a hint?
Bye Sancho

Cross said...

Hi Sancho, thanks for read this blog.

Keep it as simple as possible it's the way to go; JSF and JSPs does the work, so I think you could use one or the other without any change in the final score, just take a look of the assignment, if they're asking you to create "complex" screens then use JSF because it's easier, (Complex such as "Forms", "Reports", etc.) if they want to print some messages and that's it then use plain jsps,

Sancho said...

Thank you for answering my question.
But there is another question ;)
In the Deliverables you canread, that you have to create diagrams,risks, and assumptions.

Do you have more text? For example:
1. Introduction
2. Architecture Overview
3. Basic software design decision
4. ...
5. ...
6. ...
7. System qualities
8. Risks (mentioned in the assignment)
9. Assumptions (mentioned in the assignment)

Or do you have only text as comments in your diagrams?

Thank you for answering my questions.

Neelam said...

Hi cross,

Going through this blog and many more from code ranch, i started preparing for SCEA last week , but i have book by Allen and Bambara currently that too of Exam 310 - 051, i am confused by reading a lot on net this way to prepare that way to prepare ...., Can u please suggest me how to start and which study material i should refer, how many sample questions i need to do before appearing for exam, Your help will be appreciated as initially i was very confident but now after reading so much from net i am not able to find out whether i am on correct path, also tell me how much time is required for tyhis exam prepration, i have touched almost all topics except ejb, please suggest.

Cross said...

Hi Neelam, has been a while since I did the test, but I will try to give you the best idea of how to train yourself to make it with the test,

First of all, you need to understand pretty well the differences between the architecture required for big and small problems, and try to create architectures which fits your problem, addressing the common problems of: security, mantainance and that kind of stuff, but bare in mind that every problem has different solutions and they will evaluate your hability to fit the JEE technology in the real life situations, that's why you need to read all the Blueprints patterns, those will guide you trought solutions to every kind of problem.
You need to do as much tests as you think you need to keep a good score in your mocks, remember that your will get at least 20% less in your real test than in your mock, that's why you need to achieve 100% of the score using the mock examns.
I know this is not a straight answer to your questions but this is far from an easy test and the best way to pass this test is to have the experience doing real life architecture, if you dont have it then you need to adquire it learning from others.
Good luck with your test and please let me know how it went.

Neelam said...

Thanx Cross...,
I have started preparing the same from Cade and Sheil book, then i will move to some more topics online on technologies before starting Mock.

I will definelty let you know the result.

Unknown said...

Thank you very Much for your blog. Though I have not started yet for preparation,but I got the idea,how to go about it, which will be helpful for me in future