Passes Part 1 with 89%

All,
Passed Part 1 yesterday. My summary:
Concepts cover the role of an architect, non-functional reqyuirements (performance, scalability, reliability, availability, extensibility, manageability, maintainability and security) and UML.
Common Architectures will cover 1-tier (monolithic), 2-tier and n-tier. Useful to know how the non-functional requirements tie in with the architecture.
Legacy Connectivity will have scenario questions on how to connect to a certain kind of legacy system. Best way to do this is break the question down, draw a picture (it helps) and then try to answer the question.
EJB and container model - If you've read the first 8 chapters in the older edition of Monson-Haefel (don't know in terms of the new book), that will more than cover what you need. Make sure you understand the benefits and pitfalls of each type of bean.
Applicability of J2EE (more scenario questions) Guess you know this after studying everything for the exam.
Patterns, Messaging, Internationalization and Security are pretty easy. Please read some introductory material on JMS. I found the JMS part of the J2EE tutorial very helpful.
For Patterns, I used GoF primarily and also referred to Non-Software Examples (initially), and Applied Java Patterns (occasionally). If you understand the intent, motivation, structure (UML) and collaborations, that will more than be sufficient. Though the exam does dot go into them in any depth your knowledge of patterns will be invaluable in the assignment. Many J2EE patterns are based on existing GoF patterns.
For I18N, I read the Mark Cade book and the tutorial on SUN.
Messaging - Read the first couple of chapters in the JMS book by Monson Haefel. The J2EE tutorial is good.
Security - I read the 2 netscape papers (Public Key Cryptography, SSL), the 3COM paper (firewalls), Java 2 Security enhancements from SUN - modified sandbox model...all code local (can) and remote (will) be subjected to a policy file.
Protocols - Primarily followed Mark Cade, and the PDF file.
Chris Broeker's notes, the PDF files -anonymous are invaluable. If you have access to Jamie Javorski's old SCJA book read that for Legacy connectivity. If you don't have it, read Balaji's notes.
All in all, the exam was quite easy. Many questions were atleast 4-5 lines of description, even if it was a radio button chioce type. A few questions had exhibits too. My strong advice is that for all the lengthy scenarios, first read the question and answers...will give you an idea of what they want. Then you can read the scenario. Also start drawing pictures representing the scenario. That makes things very easy. So you know there's a browser, firewall, web-server, app-server cluster, db (for example.)
Also do not be in a hurry. After finishing my first pass, I had close to 20 minutes remaining. I had marked off 7 questions, lengthy types, that I wanted to revisit and make sure I'd got them right. I spent about 15 minutes on those later. I did not revisit the other answers. It turns out that I made two careless errors in those...one in concepts (for crying out aloud.) If I'd read them properly, I could have landed a nice 93.
My break up is as follows:
Total /48 (89%)
Concepts 83%
Common Arch 66%
Legacy Conn 100%
EJB 100%
EJB Container 100%
Protocols 100%
Appl. of J2EE 66%
Patterns 100%
Messaging 100%
I18N 100%
Security 50%
Hope this helps. If there are other questions, please let me know. Off to part 2!

Congrats Sanjay
Can you give the link to Chris and Balaji's notes?
Thanx for the summary!
faiza

oops i found the notes link ... Thanx anyway.

Congratulations Sanjay!
Ian

Thanks Ian...
And BTW forgot to mention that Ian's test is probably the closest you're going to get to the actual exam...it reinforces the concepts really well.
Note that the exam itself is a little harder and definitely has more lengthy and scenario type questions...

Ian,
I was wondering if you'd like to work with me (on an as time permits basis) and put together a full mock test with sufficient scenario type questions. We could try to make it an as good representation of the exam as possible. It think it would benefit the SCEA aspirants greatly.
Your opinion?

Ian, please steal some time for the newcomers
we are waiting for a involving mock

thank you people for your time!!

Hello Sanjay,
Sorry I haven't replied sooner.
I'd definitely be interested in writing a scenario based mock exam. If we do it though we have to be very careful to ensure that the questions are useful but not to close to the real ones. The scenario questions would take longer to write and I�m pretty pushed for time at present. But I should be able to come up with roughly 5 a week, maybe more. (Depends how far England get in the World Cup!)
If we aim to write 48 between us we should have the best mock on the web!
What do you think?
Ian

I went thru the Ian's web page. In the ejb part, I saw some qns related to the performance of BMP and CMP. Is it true that CMP does not give a good performance than BMP.I saw this fact in his page.I got confused because, Sun suggests to use CMP all the time. Kindly clarify
Rgds
Shan

Congrats Sanjay !!!
And all your tips are helpful.
Ian and Sanjay,I'd request both of you to come up with scenario based questions.
One common problem with those having 1year of J2EE experience is that they can never be sure whether their knowledge is sufficient to clear the exam.
So I believe both of your efforts will make life of other guys really eaxy.
I am looking forward to an joint mock test from both of you.
Thanx in anticipation.

Sandeep

Pls give me the link for Chris Broeker's notes.
Somhow I am unable to find it !!!

Thanx.

Sanjay, you mentioned the pdf file several times. Could you indicate which pdf file you are talking about?

Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scea_prep
You will find the PDFs under the Files section.
HTH.