Just back from the exam center.
Here is my experiences:
1. Only 1 DND type question on J2EE related topic.2. You have to know the basic ideas of UML, and the UML guide provided by Dave and Bert will be very enough for UML-related questions. UML versions, 1.x and 2.0, are not a problem because there is no question asked for a particular version. Questions are common to both versions.3. 2 questions for Program-to-Interface. Do read what is that meaning, and read some examples for this topic.4. You have to understand various J2EE & J2ME related technologies in a high level aspect. For example, what system should use which versions of Java technologies; which technologies should be used in which tier of the system. Do read the J2EE tutorial from SUN to get an overview understanding on each technology.5. There are some questions that required to read lots of codes. Do pay attention on them. Some of them are quite tricky.6. Have a deep understanding in basic Java, like primitives, String, etc, lots of questions related to these areas.7. Read on the differences between Swing and Applet, as well as when should use Swing/Applet instead of plain HTML/JavaScript, and vice verse.8. Read on how Java fulfills OO principles, inheriences, encapsulations, polymorphism & dynamic binding. Also, be aware of how Java supports inheriences, especially for extending a class (concrete or non-concrete) and implementing interfaces, including overriding and overloading.9. There are some questions regarding the compliations & executions for Java programs and codes. Some of them even ask for a particular compliation option flag. Do have a breif understanding for the most common flag.10. Some questions are related to enumerations. Pay attention to how to delcare an enumeration class, how to make use of a particular value of an enumeration, and how to initialize an object with values from an enumeration.11. Distingish between the differences of i++ and ++i. Some questions required you to distingish this as different answers will come up.12. Understand the most common Java packages and utilities, especially what classes will be imported automatically during compliation, and know which utiltiy is provided by which packages. Also, you have to know the main purpose for those most common packages, like IO, AWT, etc.13. You have to pay attention to some acronyms. Some questions will ask about them. For example, JCA = Java Connectivity Architecture.14. Some questions about Thread. There is no coding in this type of questions, however, you have to know when the thread is use, how it is used and how to interact with common object for several threads.15. There are certain questions on the database topic. Make sure you know how Java interacts with database, and how data can be retrieved in Java programs.16. There are some 1-sentence question with short answers. They will not spend you much time because you can pick the answers immediately. In general, I spent only 1 hour 25 minutes to complete 122 questions, including the double check. I have given my comments for around 40 questions. Some of the questions are incorrect but you can still dig out the answers. Some of the questions are ambigous, but still, you might guess out the correct answers. It is better to give comments when you discover problems in the questions. Since the exam is not difficult, I guess, for Java Cert. holders, you won't spend more than 2 hours for it, and thus,
you should have plenty of time to provide your comments.
Running out of time is no longer an excuse to skip providing our valuable comments to SUN.
Even though some people said you don't have to study for it if you are Java certification holder, I spent around 2 weeks (2-3 hours per day) preparing for this exam.
Here list the materials I used for preparing this exam:
1. The UML guide as specified in point 2
2. UML distilled (You don't actually need this if you use material 1)
3. Java2 Complete Reference, J2SE 5.0 edition
4. Head First
Servlets and
JSP 5. Head First EJB
6. J2EE Web Services (Read the overview and introduction will be enough)
7. J2ME Complete Reference (Read the overview and introduction will be enough)
8. Various tutorials from SUN for
JDBC, JNDI and JMS (If you have taken IBM 484, this will be no problem to you, and you can use the same set of tutorials)
9. Tutorials from W3C for HTML
Finally, my last comment to Javaranchers and SUN is, Java certification holders really should not take this exam because it is focus for Java beginners. I believe SUN should either make
SCJA as the pre-requist for all other Java certifications, or strictly restrict Java certification holders must NOT take this exam.
Hope this help.
Nick
[ July 03, 2005: Message edited by: Nicholas Cheung ]
SCJP 1.2, OCP 9i DBA, SCWCD 1.3, SCJP 1.4 (SAI), SCJD 1.4, SCWCD 1.4 (Beta), ICED (IBM 287, IBM 484, IBM 486), SCMAD 1.0 (Beta), SCBCD 1.3, ICSD (IBM 288), ICDBA (IBM 700, IBM 701), SCDJWS, ICSD (IBM 348), OCP 10g DBA (Beta), SCJP 5.0 (Beta), SCJA 1.0 (Beta), MCP(70-270), SCBCD 5.0 (Beta), SCJP 6.0, SCEA for JEE5 (in progress)