Hi,
Just passed the SCBCD with 95%.
My background
12 years Java development.
8 Years experience with EJB 2.1.
A little rusty as I have not used EJB's in anger for about 5 years.
My approach
I was inspired / motivated by a grad developer on my team who passed the certification.
Started at the beginning of 2009.
Read Manning - EJB in Action (a little boring, never went back to it)
Read Apress - Pro EJB 3 Java Persistence API (which was a fun read but only gave me background to the cert. Never looked at it again, however I used some of the samples like the JPA query executer)
Took a long break due to family commitments, etc.
Started again in October.
Read MZ_SCBCD_5_Study_Guide (and wrote summary notes) ... a super huge thank-you to MZ
Started doing practice exams.
Used Enthuware (fantastic!!)
Did many tests, including the 3 standard ones. Used the custom tests to focus on problem areas.
Used MZ, and O'Reilly - Enterprise JavaBeans 3 to clarify questions I got wrong.
Finally I tried Sun's practice exams (these are pretty bad with so many mistakes and poor grammar!! However, they covered some questions that appeared in the exam)
Did the final Enthuware exam, reviewed notes on the day and sat the exam.
Aced it with 95%. Missed 3 questions (MDB, JP Query and Transactions).
Exam was much easier than the practice ones (and of a much higher quality).
ALL questions made sense and actually tested "useful" facts instead of just trying to trick you.
No double negatives or ambiguous questions. (Thanks SUN)
I did not read the spec. It hurt my head too much!!! I had it in pdf and check a few things in it. Some questions came from it, but I was under huge time pressure (young kids, job, etc) so I did not think it was worth it.
I did not do much coding. I wish I could have, but it was not needed for the certificate. Hopefully I will get hands-on experience when I use ejb 3 at work.
Certification was a great experience. Check out my blog on why you should get certified (
http://gavinlas.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/4/)
If you have any other questions, please let me know.