Almost all of your questions have been discusses here:
SCEA Beta Test Exam As far as placeholder questions, yes, there were four of five.
As far as XML DD excerpts, I didn't see any.
As far as APIs go, I don't recall too much API stuff. I mean, they never asked questions about a particular method. In fact, I don't remember any code at all, and when I think API, I think code.
Having said that, you needed to know a whole heck of
alot about
JSF,
EJB 3.0 and Web Services. That was a huge part of the exam, and some fairly in depth questions.
-Cameron McKenzie