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Just took the IBM J2EE (483) Exam....

 
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This test is difficult, but not difficult like the UML 486 exam. After I passed UML 2 weeks ago, I set my focus on J2EE 483. So I reviewed the topics covered in this exam, and I was upset to find out that so many broad areas of J2EE are covered on the exam, such as J2EE environment, EJB, JSP, Servlet, JMS, RMI, etc. That, folks, is too much to study.
So, I registered for the exam last Thursday to take today on Monday, August 6, just to go and see what the test was like. I had every intention to fail the test because, to be honest, I just wanted to go and scope it out. I would then study the areas in which the test placed emphasis on, then retake it.
First, let me tell you that this test is VERY long, and if you dont watch your time, you will be screwed. The test focuses mainly on EJB, emphasizing transaction isolation levels, home and remote interface design, as well as bean design, JSP, emphasizing mostly directives, page processing commands, and redirects using RequestDispatcher, and some Servlet questions relative to session management. The high emphasis on these topics should not surprise you since IBM recommends "Enterprise JavaBeans, 2nd Edition" and "Web Development with JavaServer Pages" as the most effective educational resources to help you get prepared for this exam. There were a few questions scattered covering RMI and JMS, but nothing to get bent out of shape over, just basic stuff. What surprised me is that there were no questions regarding the J2EE runtime environment.
Anyway, I finished taking the test with 4 minutes left, and to my surprise, I passed! I achieved 60%, and passing is only 60%, but hell man!, I passed!
At this point, I have only 1 exam left, IBM IBM WebSphere Application Server V3.5 AE (498).
These past 2 months have been hell. I have prepared for and taken 3 exams, including SCJD, UML, and J2EE. I am sick of studying, but this last test should not be a problem because I look forward in working with IBM's Visual Age product, since many questions on 498 address this product.
good luck with your exams,
SAF
[This message has been edited by SAFROLE YUTANI (edited August 06, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by SAFROLE YUTANI (edited August 06, 2001).]
 
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Hi Safrole
Congratulations on passing J2EE 483. 3 papers in 2 months . What a good shot.
Best of luck for next test.
Tahir Mansoori
 
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Hi Safrole,
Congratulations on passing the Test 483!
I am suprised to see IBM changing the passing scores quite frequently.When I took this test earlier this year the passing score was 65%.I scored 72% then.
I liked this test more that Test 486.Also found it a little trickier than Test 486.This test covers lots of Java Enterprise topics like you have mentioned.
Did you not get any questions on CORBA?Just a note to the future test takers - Although the test objectives mentions CORBA, they actually want to test you on JNI API.You can confirm this by reading a note at Jcert Initiative.

I am planning to take the IBM VAJ test by the end of this month and then I plan to take 2 more test on IBM WAS (SE and AE) by the end of this year.That should help me earn the titles of IBM as well as Oracle Jcert track (which I have already completed!).
Looking forward for intersting discussions with you in the Javaranch forums,
Regards,
Sandeep
SCJP2,OCSD(Oracle JDeveloper),OCED(Oracle Internet Platform)
[This message has been edited by Desai Sandeep (edited August 07, 2001).]
 
SAFROLE YUTANI
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Desai,
I do not remember any questions regarding Corba, but there were some questions on JNDI, which I forgot to mention ealier.
Why are you taking both SE and AE of IBM WAS? For me, at this point, I only need to take IBM AE to complete the Certified Enterprise Developer.
SAF
 
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Congrats! Excellent work.
------------------
David Roberts - SCJP2,MCP
 
Desai Sandeep
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Hi Saf,
We have a seperate subsection for JNDI for this test.
In the Connectivity services subsection of the test objective you also have a subtopic which says "Select and use alternative distribution technologies like RMI,CORBA and JMS".One would have thought IBM to have some questions on CORBA like the one we have in the pre-assessment test (on implementation repository,etc.).However, I got some questions on JNI API instead.Also for JMS they had asked some questions at the API level.
As regards IBM Jcert track,since I am new to these products, I have decided to learn them step by step.That is the reason I started off with VAJ and then I will be moving on IBM WAS (SE and AE).
-- Sandeep
SCJP2,OCSD(Oracle JDeveloper),OCED(Oracle Internet Platform)


[This message has been edited by Desai Sandeep (edited August 08, 2001).]
 
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Could someone maybe post a sample test from test 483 that has corrcet answers.. I think this would be very helpful to those of us studying..
Thanks,
Mahendra
 
Desai Sandeep
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Mahendra,
I had scored 100% in the IBM pre-assessment test of Test 483.Let me know, if you require help on any specific questions.
Sandeep
SCJP2, OCSD(Oracle JDeveloper), OCED(Oracle Internet Platform)
 
Mahendra Nambiar
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Sandeep,
Do I need to study Corba at all to pass this exam.. I understand it at a high level, but do not know specifics.. how important is this?
-Mahendra
 
Mahendra Nambiar
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Sandeep,
Could you tell me when finder methods should be used with EJB's?
-Mahendra
 
Mahendra Nambiar
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Sandeep,
here are two questions, I am not sure about.. i took the presassessment test and got 96% but am not sure which of these two questions i got wrong?
I appreciate your help.
Thanks,
Mahendra.

11) One Answer
An EJB business method performs an operation that throws a checked exception. The bean cannot recover from this checked exception and should rollback. The bean will be deployed using container-managed transaction demarcation. Which implementation is the BEST?

a) public void businessMethod() { try { // operation throwing SomeCheckedException goes here } catch (SomeCheckedException ae) { throw new EJBException(ae); } }

b) public void businessMethod() { try { // operation throwing SomeCheckedException goes here } catch (SomeCheckedException ae) { context.setRollbackOnly(); throw new EJBException(ae); } }

c) public void businessMethod() throws EJBException { try { // operation throwing SomeCheckedException goes here } catch (SomeCheckedException ae) { throw new EJBException(ae); } }

d) public void businessMethod() throws EJBException { try { // operation throwing SomeCheckedException goes here } catch (SomeCheckedException ae) { context.setRollbackOnly(); throw new EJBException(ae); } } }
I picked d. b/c thats the only one that really made sense syntactically and also because it called the rollback. I am not sure if that would be done by the container in the transaction management or if it should be called explicitly.
19)
What steps does a J2EE developer need to use to get a reference to an existing EJB's home?
a) Get a remote reference to the EJB home by using the JNDI Context lookup() method, passing the name of the EJB's home.

b) Use the RMIRegistry lookup() method to get a remote reference to the EJB home.

c) Cast the EJB home remote reference to the right type by using the PortableRemoteObject.narrow() static method, passing the remote reference and the class of the EJB home.

d) Cast the remote object reference to the right type within Java.

Multiple Select - Please select all of the correct answers (this question has 3 correct choices).

I picked a, c, d. b did not make sense.
 
Desai Sandeep
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Mahendra,
I would suggest you browse through the CORBA specification once.However, be sure to go through the JNI API.You will be tested at the syntax level for this API.
As regards Finder methods in EJB, it is used only in Entity Beans only.Again Entity Beans are of 2 types - Bean Managed Persistence(BMP) and Container Managed Persistence (CMP) beans.In the former, you have to implement the finder methods yourself, while in the latter the container takes care of it.
As regards to your questions, the answers are :
11. B
19. A, C, D
As for the 11 question, note that EJBException is a System Level Exception, which occurs when there are problems with the services of the application.Also it is a subclass of RuntimeException, and hence may not be declared in the throws clause.Hence, B is the correct answer.
As for the 19 question, you do a look up using JNDI service.EJB may not use RMI service (or RMIRegistry) for lookup.Hence B is incorrect in this case.
Hope this helps,
Sandeep
SCJP2, OCSD(Oracle JDeveloper), OCED(Oracle Internet Platform)
[This message has been edited by Desai Sandeep (edited September 13, 2001).]
 
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Desai,
I think the answewr to Q.11 is A as it is a system level exception the commit takes place automatically without being set explicitly.
Regds,
Ritwik
 
Desai Sandeep
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Hi Ritwik,
Thank you for bring this out.The correct answer is A for Q11.!
We do not need to call context.setRollbackOnly() because when the System Exception occurs within a transaction, the EJB container rolls back the transaction implicitly.

Regards,
Sandeep
[This message has been edited by Desai Sandeep (edited September 17, 2001).]
 
Ritwik Batabyal
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I have a problem to select the right answer for the question below :
Which of the following is true concerning CMP Entity bean activation and passivation?
a)Storage of persistent state to the database is handled automatically by the EJB container during passivation.
b)A client must explicitly activate a bean that has been passivated.
c)Clients do not directly communicate with a bean and are unaware of activation and passivation.
I think both a and c are correct but only one answer is to be selected.
Regds,
Ritwik
 
Desai Sandeep
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Hi Ritwik,
I believe A is incorrect.Reason - Persistence Mechanism is usually managed by the Server.Normally the Application Server will provide tools to set the "(I)solation" and "(A)tomicity" of ACID properties for persistence to take place successfully.
But again, the EJB 1.1 doesn't clearly lay down the contract between Container and the Server.So it is difficult to distinguish between the two.However, we may consider persistence as a low-level mechanism (beyond the scope of the Beans in the middle-tier) and hence IMO should be the responsibility of the the EJB Server and not EJB Container.
Comments please!
Sandeep
 
Mahendra Nambiar
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Hi,
I might be wrong, but doesnt the container write the entity representation to the db during ejbStore as opposed to to ejbPassivate. This might be why this answer (a) is wrong, atleast that was my impression.

and thanx for explaining the other two questions..
-Mahendra
 
Desai Sandeep
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Hi Mahendra,
You are correct, when you say that the Container calls the ejbStore() to write the records to the DB.Before that you can be sure that atleast once the ejbPassivate() will be called, although you can not guarantee that it will be called each time before ejbStore() gets called.
If IBM meant this by A, then we can say that passivation doesnot cause the storage of persistent state to the database to be handled automatically - i.e. a call to ejbStore() should be made for this purpose, as an implicit call to this method is done just once.
However, I was viewing this option from a different perspective.Consider a situation where we have distributed components, i.e., multiple components in different AS's trying to update the DB.If this is the case, the persistence has to be taken care by the Transaction Co-ordinator/Transaction Managers of the AS, Resource Managers of the DB, which is outside the scope of the EJB container.Hence, I was suggesting that the persistence mechanism has to be done by the EJB Server instead of EJB Container.
Hope this helps,
Sandeep
[This message has been edited by Desai Sandeep (edited September 19, 2001).]
 
Mahendra Nambiar
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Sandeep,
I agree with you.. but i read the question again and it says
"Storage of persistent state to the database is handled automatically by the EJB container during passivation."
Isnt storage of persistence also handled by the container during creation?
-Mahendra

------------------
SCJP, JCERT Certified Solutions Developer.
 
Ritwik Batabyal
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Desai,
Firstly, I think ejbStore() is called prior to ejbPassivate().
Now according to question -
"Storage of persistent state to the database is handled automatically by the EJB container during passivation."
...the stress is coming on "during passivation".Now the bean's state (ie storage of persistent state) is synchronized in ejbStore() which is done prior to the invokation of ejbPassivate()("during passivation").
Regds,
Ritwik
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