OCE Java EE 6 EJB Developer - after the exam

Howdy Ranchers!

Today I've taken the EJB 3.1 exam and successfully passed it with 96%.
I must say that the "Enterprise Java Beans 3.1" by Bill Burke and Andrew Lee Rubinger was a great help and a very good start. Then I followed with the EJB 3.1 Spec which was a single best source of knowledge, so for all you EJB 3.1 exam candidates - it's really worth of reading and it will be certainly a good investment of your time.

I also invested in Enthuware's mock exams which were tremendously helpful. A lot of good questions, I learned a lot of stuff from it and it was a very good addition to the specification reading. It's definitely worth the price!

I found the Ivan Krizsan's notes also great, very valuable and well organized. I did a lot of side-notes during the reading.

Finally, reading the JavaRanch Forums was a nice summary for the learning process. I also did write a lot of examples and used many of the learned EJB features in project in my workplace.

As for the questions, they wasn't any shock after seeing 270+ Enthuware questions and reading all the specs. I guess that about 5 - 7 questions were a surprise and asked about things I didn't know in the first place. There were just a few questions which asked something about the ejb-jar.xml. Great majority of the questions were annotation-based.
No drag and drop questions after changing from Prometric to Pearson VUE and a slightly changed security measures. It was my first exam at Pearson, so they asked me to take a signature on the tablet and they took my photo which was added to the Examination Score Report.

You can also see the score on the screen after finishing the exam and after you hit 'end' the report is printed on the staff's desk. It's a small, but nice, change from Prometric where you could see your score after leaving the room and awaiting for the printout to be passed to you by the staff.

And if it comes to the time I spent on learning. I didn't have any experience with EJB's (well I knew what they are, but didn't really used it in any of my real-life projects). I've bought the EJB book on 21.04.2011 and started to read it. I do have a part-time job (30h/week), so I could spend a top of 2 h/day for the reading and learning.

So, thanks a lot all of you guys who helped me - I mean the authors of the Enterprise Java Beans 3.1 book, Enthuware's great software, Ivan Krizsan for notes and all you Java Ranchers who answered my questions (Jaikiran Pai and Jayr Motta, to name just a few!) and all the community who already asked the question which answers I looked for ;-)
You were, as usual, a source of great knowledge :-)

Cheers!

PS. I did forgot to add that in Enthuware's exams I had an average of 77%.
PPS. Another source of great knowledge is a BlackBeltFactory where you can find two mock exams (with many questions) regarding the EJB 3.

Congrats

Pedro Kowalski,

Congratulations, you deserve it man!

My exam is next wednesday, thanks for the tips, it will certainly be very useful!

Congratulations, Pedro! Great score! Glad to know that our product was helpful

Could you please elaborate on the 5-7 questions that surprised you? I mean, what topic were they from? Was it the style of asking or the information required to answer them is not readily available?

Gratuluję, mistrzu !

Wielkie Dzieki, Thanks Guys! :-))

Paul, I'll check my score report and try to recall them :-)

Cheers!

Congrats!

Howdy!

Ok, so if it comes to these uncommon questions - it's not the matter of the asking form. In fact, the form of the questions was very similar to the Enthuware's which makes me feel very comfortable at the site. It was just like taking another test (and BTW. if the Enthuware could look like Pearson VUE, just like ExamLab looked like Prometric it would be just exactly as the real test :-)

It was more about the information they asked.
The questions I was surprised by was mainly about the JMS -- the topic in which I felt quite weak -- i.e. about filtering the messages that will be received by the MDB, the message body and header properties, etc. There was also one question about the technologies which are part of the Full Java EE profile; as I understand most of the acronyms used in Java EE the ones asked on the exam was quite unknown :-) Method of elimination was the best in this case.
There was also one question which combines the "name", "lookup" and "mappedName" attributes of the @Resource which made me think some time about the answer. I guess this part is somehow misty...

I guess that's it - other questions was very similar to the Enthuware's, like what artifacts should reside in the client of the EJB-JAR or in what version/profile of Java EE the *.war deployment of EJB with no-interface view is possible (at least this was the real, but hidden, question).

I also lost 1 point in SFSB and I guess it was on question regarding passivation of interceptors.

HTH!

Thanks once again and cheers!

Pedro Kowalski wrote:Howdy!

Ok, so if it comes to these uncommon questions - it's not the matter of the asking form. In fact, the form of the questions was very similar to the Enthuware's which makes me feel very comfortable at the site. It was just like taking another test (and BTW. if the Enthuware could look like Pearson VUE, just like ExamLab looked like Prometric it would be just exactly as the real test :-)

It was more about the information they asked.
The questions I was surprised by was mainly about the JMS -- the topic in which I felt quite weak -- i.e. about filtering the messages that will be received by the MDB, the message body and header properties, etc. There was also one question about the technologies which are part of the Full Java EE profile; as I understand most of the acronyms used in Java EE the ones asked on the exam was quite unknown :-) Method of elimination was the best in this case.
There was also one question which combines the "name", "lookup" and "mappedName" attributes of the @Resource which made me think some time about the answer. I guess this part is somehow misty...

I guess that's it - other questions was very similar to the Enthuware's, like what artifacts should reside in the client of the EJB-JAR or in what version/profile of Java EE the *.war deployment of EJB with no-interface view is possible (at least this was the real, but hidden, question).

I also lost 1 point in SFSB and I guess it was on question regarding passivation of interceptors.

HTH!

Thanks once again and cheers!

Thanks a lot for your feedback, Pedro! We will work on enhancing the content regarding the topics that you've mentioned.

Congratulations Pedro

Well deserved!

Thanks a lot! :-)

Thank you for your info Pedro Kowalski

Can I know whether any assignments is there for Java EE 6 EJB developer exam???

@mohamedhathi, no there is no assignment for this certificate. Assignments are required only for master exams.

Thanks for your reply Pedro !!!

Can you give me what are the books and notes to refer for EJB 6 certification!!!If you have some sample Q/s please send me to this id
mohamedhathi@tataelxsi.co.in.Thank you

@mohamedhathi
I've posted all my resources in the first post. If it comes to the questions, as I said, I used the Enthuware's EJB mock questions - it's really worth buying, so if I were you I wouldn't hesitate :-)

Cheers!

Hi Predro,
thks for all your feedback. I'm going to take this exam and i'm a bit confuse the duration of the exam.
Is it 60 questions for 110mn as mentionned in the oracle web site?

Henry

@Henry

No problem, glad I could be of any help.

Yes, it's rather short exam and not too much time for each question. Nevertheless, the time is more than adequate, the questions are straightforward - no intricacies like in the SCJP exam, so no worries :-)

Cheers!

Thks Pedro

Pedro,

could you tell me if there is some questions regarding EJB 2 and EJB 3.0 or if the exam is only foused on EJB 3.1?

thks

It's the exam for EJB 3.1. There are no EJB2-only parts.

Congratulations, a very good result indeed!
Any suggestions for improvements of my book?
Best wishes!

Thanks Ivan and much obliged for such remarkable piece of book :-)

I'm sorry (or not? depends on your point of view :-) but I don't have any improvement ideas at this moment. It has been a while since I took the exam... However, be sure that if I'll get back to your book and find something than I will surely give you a sign :-)

Cheers!