Passed Part 1 with 91%

[Frank Kelly]

Hey folks,
Just another self-congratulatory/ informational e-mail.
I passed Part 1 with 91% (44 out of 48)
Concepts 100%
Common Architectures 66%
Legacy Connectivity100%
EJB100%
EJB Container Model75%
Protocols100%
Applicability of J2EE100%
Design Patterns100%
Messaging100%
Internationalization50%
Security100%
Notes on Questions
General
-------
As other people have indicated there are a LOT of scenario-based questions e.g. ask you to pick architectures etc. that fit that scenario.
Some questions were a little vague so take
your time.
Some questions have LONG descriptions 6-10 lines and are worth drawing pictures to help
think about them.
Concepts
- What kinds of "ilitys" should an architect be concerned with (Scalability, availability etc.)
- Needed to be able to recognize a Sequence diagram
- Need to be able to recognize a UML Realization relationship(implements interface!)
- Recognize what development techniques help code re-use (e.g. factoring etc.)
Common Architectures
- There were a LOT of migration architecture questions which played into Legacy Connectivity or Applicability of J2EE and applets
- Understand what clustering is and how it helps an architecture (scalability)
- Understand what DNS round robin can do for scalability/load balancing
Legacy Connectivity
- At least two on MQSeries
- Quite a few on IIOP esp. port-related
- Quite a few on applets and IIOP
- recognizing when screen scraping is appropriate
EJB
- Needed to know Stateless session beans cannot be passivated/activated
- Needed to know what the Application Assembler does (I didn't!)
- Benefits of pooling of Entity beans (Scalability)
- Relationship of code in ejbActivate() and ejbPassivate()
- Bean lifecycle

EJB Container Model
- Need to know what Container model handles for you (transactions,
CMP)
- Need to know how to speed up performance of certain architectures
e.g. use BMP vs. DAO etc.
- Does "Required" mean that a new transaction is created if the bean is invoked outside of a transaction?
- CMP vs BMP - Benefits and Costs
- How can a transaction be coordinated with legacy systems or Java systems outside the container/server

Protocols
- Need to know about ports for HTTP/HTTPS to answer architecture questions
- Know that you can tunnel IIOP over HTTP/HTTPS
- Know that HTTPS is stateful
Applicability of J2EE
- Given a description of an application tell when J2EE might be required and not
Design Patterns
- Need to know recognize a description of Proxy, Observer
- JDBC ResultSet uses Iterator
- Costs of Design patterns (performance etc.)
Messaging
- Basics of JMS (Publish/Subscribe vs. MQ)
- Know that MQSeries is compatible with JMS
Internationalization
- What class supports conversion of 8-bit characters to Unicode
- What aspects of a system are typically internationalized at startup time
Security
- Certificates - how they can be used in conjunction with jarsigner and a user's keystore
- Know that unsigned applets CANNOT read arbitrary files but can open network connections (ONLY back to the server for the
applet)
- Know what aspects of a firewall can impact IIOP (i.e. what filters)
RESOURCES USED
i) Enterprise Java Beans 2nd Edition (EJB 1.1) by Monson-Haefel
Chapters 1-8.
ii) Design Patterns by Gang of Four
iii) I took a course on Design Patterns based on the book - available at Harvard Extension School
iv) UML Distilled (Martin Fowler & Kendall Scott)
v) Tim Ho's Notes
vi) Read quite a few of the papers on links for SCEA_PREP
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scea_prep/
Thanks to all at Javaranch
and on SCEA_PREP group at Yahoo!
FYI I'm actually going to wait on Part 2 / 3 for a while until I get more design experience. I think I'll take IBM's XML Certification to be a little more balanced. I hate to say it
but it might be time to hedge a little
with .Net :-(
Best,
-Frank Kelly
SCJP2, SCEA Pt. 1

[Shabbir Rahman]

Congrats Kelly....
Good info for us in your post.

[Nicky Moelholm]

Congratulations and thanks for sharing your examn experience.

[Edward Farrow]

Really good post, thanks. I've been studying on and off since Jan but work/hobbies keep getting in the way. Tough to get motivated. I guess piece by piece.

[Sanjay Raghavan]

Congrats,
Great score! Welcome to Part-2