Taka Chan

Rogerio,

I think if you have read Head First EJB, Head First JSP & Servlet, Head First Design Pattern, these books have already covered a large portion of the syllabus of SCEA. I indeed hope that a Head First book for EJB3 will be out in the future.

Hi Eric,

I have tried the following 2 mock exams:

http://www.moelholm.com/moelholmweb/pages/mocks/mocks_scea.xml
http://www.harishramchandani.com/index.php

Just finished it on last Sat, will move on to Part 2 & 3 immediately.

My 2 cents is that if you have cleared SCWCD & SCBCD before, don't worry, you can finish this exam with ease. I just spent spare time when in office during the past 2 months to read through the following books once:

1. Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Study Guide (Exam 310-051)
2. Head First Design Pattern

Then do some free mock exams found on the internet and get this result.

I am also preparing for the 310-051 exam. The most critical factor that you can still take the old version depends on whether you have bought the assignment voucher for part 2 exam before end of Feb this year. For part 1 and 3, the exam prefix is also 310 and you can just purchase ordinary 310 voucher and then go for it.

If you have purchased the assignment voucher of part 2, you can finish all 3 parts and being certified SCEA before end of Dec. If not, you cannot take the old version. But if you have passed the part 1 of old version already, you may try to call Sun Education in your resdential area and ask for an assignment voucher. Maybe they will grant your wish. Just have a try.

Does anyone know that where still can find mock exam for the old SCEA part 1? Many of the mock exams mentioned in Javaranch SCEA link are not accessible now.

I am planning to take this exam by end of July, so if you have any other mock exams, would you please reply and give me the URL? Thanks a lot.

For part II, it does not have an expiry date. But as the old exam has expiried, you need to submit your assignment and finish part III exam by end of this year. So, I think you can continue to finish you part II assignment first, and then buy a new voucher for part III.

The most important thing is that you should already have a voucher for Part II exam. Since for Part I & III, the exam is also 310 prefix. You just need to buy voucher for prefix 310 exam for them. However, if you have not bought the voucher for assignment, I think you cannot buy one now.

Moreover, although you have got all necessary voucher, you must complete the exam before end of Dec 2008.

Postponed for more than 1 year, I have finally passed the SCBCD. Within this period of time, I just read the wonderful HFEJB twice. And then completed the exercises on ejbcertificate and jdiscuss in the past 2 weeks. Before the day I take the final exam, I take the final mock exam in HFEJB, and the 20% rule works again. The exam is easier than I expect.

I would like to thanks the authors of HFEJB for writing an excellent book. Thank you very much.

I am not understanding why in the ejbCreate() method of a stateless session bean, we are allowed to use the sessionContext object to get a reference to the EJBObject.

Since according to the diagrams in HFEJB on page 224-225, the flow for the creation of a stateless session bean is totally not related to client calling a method on the EJBObject. Therefore, why we can get a reference to EJBObject in ejbCreate()?

Anyone can explain so as to clear my doubt? Thank you very much.

Another question, if I have a string, but I do not know its encoding. And I want it to be converted to UTF-8. Is that I can achieve this by the following statement?

String finalStr = new String(originalStr.getBytes("UTF-8"));

Or

String finalStr = new String(originalStr.getBytes("UTF-8"), "UTF-8");

Default system encoding is ISO8859-1 and assume that my original string can be converted to UTF-8 properly, says maybe the encoding is big5 or gbk.

Am I correct? Is that I can be guranteed to get a resulting string in UTF-8 by the statements above? Thank you very much.

I have seen some technical articles say that Java is using UTF-16 as its internal encoding. And I am getting frustrated about the usage of getBytes(String charset) and the contructor of the String class, String(byte[],chartset), so I would like to make it clear.

For getBytes(String charset), the javadoc says that it will return a byte array using the specified charset to encode. Does it mean that if I have a string in big5 encoding, when I execute the statement str.getBytes("BIG5"), I am telling the jvm that the string is in big5 encoding and it will convert the string from big5 to UTF-16 and then store it in memory in UTF-16 format? Or it means that the resulting byte[] is in Big5 format?

Furthermore, if I have another string in big5, and I have a database whose encoding is UTF-8, is the following statement correct so that I can store the string in database properly in UTF-8 format?

new String(str.getBytes("Big5"), "UTF-8");

I am really feel frustrated and maybe I am not asking my question clearly, I apologise for any inconvenience caused. Hope someone can clear my frustration, thanks a lot.
[ July 04, 2006: Message edited by: Taka Chan ]

Hi,

I also start my study in March, and I am just reading HFEJB. Initially, I plan to take the exam at the end of April, but I think it will postponed until end of May. It is becuase besides getting a pass, I also desire to get a good score, so I give more time for myself to prepare.

Work hard and get luck to all of us

Is your copy an original one published from O'Reilly ? If so, I think you should ask the book store that you bought this book to exchange another copy for you.

Hi Ivy,

I would like to acquire more information about the application. If you don't mind, please send them to taka@cyberexpress.net.hk.

p.s. I am also living in HK.

I have only read the HFSJ twice and even not read the specs at all, and I can also get 91% in the SCWCD exam. So, HFSJ is enough.