Passed SCEA Part I with 97%

[Shogo Ito]

I'm happy to report I passed the part I today with 97% (47/48). Many thanks to everyone --special thanks to the Web masters-- for putting usuful stuff/links together for an easy access.

I found the following to be very helpful in prep.

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology Study Guide by Mark Cade, Simon Roberts - Not enough detail, but get you started and give you a direction

Head First Ejb: Passing the Sun Certified Business Component Developer Exam (Brain-Friendly Study Guides) by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates - Very fun book.

Sun's JMS Tutorial

Introduction to Public-Key Cryptography by Netscape

Whizlabs' exam simulator

I felt the Whizlabs was quite comparable to the actual exam. This simulator has lots of unclear questions and "I don't agree" answers. I took the practice 1 to find out where I am and then took the rest in the final week of prep. This simulator lets you customize questions e.g. all questions for EJB. I found this quite useful for a final review section by section.

Cheers!

[Malay Thakkar]

Congratulations!!! its a great score.

[Nicholas Cheung]

Congrad!

You did a cool job!

Nick

[Ramon Gill]

great score! well done.
Ray

[Mohamed Hatem]

Hi, Great score.
Can you please share with us more about your experience in the exam. The preparation material. Is there any topics to read outside the documents you have mentioned.
Also what about the Sun certified enterprise architect user guide book is it good?
Thanks
Mohamed Hatem
SCJP, SCWCD, preparing for SCEA phase I

[Shogo Ito]

Mohamed,

My list lacks the coverage on UML/Design Patterns. I've been using them for some time and did not need much prep except for the ones I never used such as Visitor, Prototype, etc. I think one can focus on the patterns that often appear in Java/J2EE.

Design Patterns in Java - Reference and Example Site was useful.

Are you refering to the book from Osborne/McGraw-Hill? If so, I didn't use it at all as quite few pointed out that it has some points wrong.

The first simulator revealed what I was weak, and I focused my study on them. In the final week of prep, I focused on my test-taking strategy. e.g. keeping a track of the number of confident/not-sure/no-clue questions, which question to go back, etc. You pile up 33 confident answers and can relax :-)

Good luck
[ July 01, 2004: Message edited by: Shogo Ito ]

[Dave Cronin]

Congratulations - a very good score. I would agree the Mark Cade book is useful, but only as a starting point. There is no one book that covers this exam. However, general IT knowledge gained from working in IT would also help, together with reading books around syllabus topics.

[Marcos Maia]

Originally posted by Shogo Ito:
Mohamed,

Design Patterns in Java - Reference and Example Site was useful.

[ July 01, 2004: Message edited by: Shogo Ito ]

I was looking for something with good samples on all patterns, tanks.

[Gerald Davis]

A lot of new fangled certification is available since I was a boy 2 years ago, like the Web Components Cert, so I am ganna check them out. By the way Congratulation, 97% is a very good score, but it�s not ganna be as good as mine, oyahh