Developer Certification b/f Architect

[Chris Garrison]

I recently passed the programmer's exam and would like to continue my studies in Java.
Is it necessary to pass the Developer's exam before taking the Architect's exam? Is it advisable?
I guess I'm not 100% sure of the difference b/tw the two. Your assistance is appreciated.

[Ashok Mash]

SCJD is NOT a pre-requisite for SCEA.
IMO, SCJD is a good-to-have after SCJP, but especially beneficial only if you don't have enough Java Programming experience.
HTH.

[Sanjay Raghavan]

The Developer exam and Architect exam cater to two different communities.
It is natural for people to progress from programmers (all code) to developers (lots of code and some design), then to designers (more design and some prototypical / proof of concept code perhaps) to architects. But all these phases do not have to be with the same programming language.
Specifically, if you are studying for the architect exam, the objectives clearly define the role of an architect vs. a designer.
The designer has to worry about the functional requirements of a project (e.g., a customer has to have online access to his data.) The designer comes with a good approach (using good oo principles, patterns e.t.c.) to make that happen.
The architect, on the other hand has to worry about the non-functional requirements - performance, scalability, reliability, availability, extensibility, maintainability, manageability and security. The architect has to find out which of these are more important for the stakeholders and be prepared to make appropriate trade-offs.
As far as the SCEA goes, part-1 will cover software architecture in depth, the part-2 then takes what you have learnt about architecture to make you come up with a design that will satisfy both functional and non-functional drequirements.
My sincere advise would be to ask yourself where you are in your career and more importantly where you are headed...that will help to determine which one to go for. As someone already mentioned the SCEA has no pre-reqs (no age / experience / exams or anything else whatsoever...)
HTH.