Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java EE Study Guide

  • ISBN13: 9780131482036
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
Definitive, Comprehensive SCEA Exam Prep–Straight from Sun’s Exam Developers! This book delivers complete, focused review for Sun’s new Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA) for Java EE certification exam–straight from two of the exam’s creators! SCEA lead developer/assessor Mark Cade and SCEA lead developer/assessor Humphrey Sheil offer powerful insights, real-world architectural case studies, and challenging sample questions that system… More >>

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java EE Study Guide

5 thoughts on “Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java EE Study Guide”

  1. I found this book almost PERFECT for my needs. Short, concise, and focused on the exam. The sample questions were also very reflective of the exam. If you pass the sample questions, you are probably ready for the exam. With what you learn from the sample questions, content as well as question style, you should actually do a bit better on the exam. That was my experience- about 75% on the book questions, 87% (42/48) on the exam, with no extra study after my initial reading.

    And considering the purpose of architect certification is to certify someone with 5+ years experience and deep understanding of design and architectural issues, then a more detailed book would be a thick painful experience. Also, a more detailed book would commit the authors to exposing more of the exam content, and devalue it as a fair measure of an architect. The fact that it requires a wide professional background with some core reading is excellent. If you struggle with the exam, enjoy the honest feedback! You have more reading to do, and experience to gain.

    With sufficient experience in Java, UML, design patterns, security, general IT and web knowledge, and basic architectural principles, the book more than suffices. Basic EJB knowledge is sufficient since the book doesn’t expect a programmer’s knowledge of APIs and such.

    If you are new to architecture, my recommendations are similar to another reviewers:
    UML Distilled, Martin Fowler
    Design Patterns, Gamma et al
    Mastering Enterprise Java Beans, Roman, Amber, Jewell
    EJB Design Patterns, Floyd Marinescu

    And if you don’t know enough about design patterns and UML to pass those chapters before even reading the chapters, you may be taking the exam a bit prematurely.

    I will agree with one statement- the book lacks chapters on some of the objectives. But, considering that they might be considered fair prerequisites for someone qualified to take the exam, I’m not complaining. Though, in looking over my exam results, most of my wrong answers were from the sections without corresponding chapters…common architectures, legacy connectivity, messaging :(. I think my proclivity for screen-scraping did me in.

    All-in-all, a masterful book and exam.
    Rating: 5 / 5

  2. I disagree with what some readers feel about the book. This book is just what a study guide should be. Concise and focused on the objectives of the exam. I read the book, took the exam and passed. I had very little time to study and this book, being so concise, definitely helped.

    If it had taken 1000 pages to help me prepare for a 48 questions exam, then I would think that the author merely just did a ‘cut and paste’ from EJB specs and a few other books. Instead, this author bothered to extract the essence of the information required for SCEA and presented it to the reader.

    Most of the sections – Security, I18n, Protocols, EJB, and Design Pattern are well written in an easy to understand and concise manner.

    Having said all that, I wonder why some objectives are missing. Common Architecture, Legacy Connectivity and Messaging are left out completely. Also, the UML section could have covered a few more notations.

    Still a good book for SCEA candidates but take note, it says “Study Guide” not “Idiot’s Guide”. So don’t expect the book to teach you how to write the “Hello World” Bean.
    Rating: 5 / 5

  3. This is the first published book for the SCJEA certification.
    Although it’s very light (less than 200 pages), it does cover
    EJB, UML, Design Patterns, Security, Internationlization, and Protocols. It provides useful information on how to apply your
    knowledges on these topics, but you should learn the knowledges
    from practice or from other books. It contains some very interesting mock questions, on UML, Security, Internationalization, Protocols, which help you a lot to understand the concept in an architect’s way. It provides a case study for part II and part III, although it is a good example, you need to know enterprise java architecting before reading this chapter.

    I finally decide to give it 4 stars instead of 5 because of two reasons:
    1. There is nothing about messaging. legacy connectivity.
    2. They copied the nine sample questions from Sun’s site, but gave no more explanation. What’s more, in the book, the answer of question 5 is incomplete (it should be A, E, but in the book, the answer is E), and the answer of question 9 does not appear in the book (which is D).

    Since it’s the only one available, I suggest you buy (or borrow) this book…
    Rating: 4 / 5

  4. Writing a certification guide poses some serious challenges to the author. Having co-authored a guide my self, I understand how tricky it is to decide how much to cover. It is not unusual to attract criticism from both sides of the aisle – too much detail or too little detail. A test like SCEA that covers such a broad ground makes the job even tougher.

    The first ever SCEA guide met most of my expectations. It is concise, covers most of the exam objectives and most importantly, maintains the focus on the test without digressing over to J2EE trivia. Every chapter attempts to cover a set of objectives, and has a review section followed by some sample test questions. The accompanying answers not only explain why an answer is the correct answer, but goes a step further to elaborate why other answers are not correct, or not-so correct. The book also introduces a case study that introduces the reader to skills essential for solving the part II assignment.

    I said the book covers “most” of the objectives. That’s where it falls short of expectations. Any study guide should, at the least, cover all the test objectives. Some test objectives such as Legacy connectivity and Messaging have been totally left out which made me question the seal of approval from Sun Education! It is one thing not to cover an objective in detail, but totally dropping a couple of them is inexcusable. The editorial bragging “..in-depth coverage of every exam objective..” is simply a prevarication when the guide itself totally drops a few objectives. A good reader can easily point out some spottiness too – such as not including the state diagram for entity beans along with that of stateful and stateless session beans.

    In summary, this guide will help you prepare for the test but you will need to supplement it with other study resources and notes. They badly need to fill some gaping holes, and to the extent possible, work towards completeness.
    Rating: 3 / 5

  5. I carry around far too many books in business travel, so I appreciate the short ones: Fowler’s UML Distilled comes to mind, as does Clark’s Designing Storage Area Networks, Brooks’s The Mythical Man Month, and Bloch’s Effective Java.

    Cade and Roberts have reduced their guide’s content to the essential elements for test preparation; I appreciate that good work. Plenty of books try to boot-strap the reader into their topic in the name of reaching a broader audience. Trust me, you’ll appreciate this effort less as the overlap in your book collection grows. You’ll appreciate it even less still when you have to box them all up for a move.

    If you’ve been working with web designs for a few years and have used a practical, higher-level language to describe new systems to other people, and you’ve been through J2EE systems a few times, you’re probably ready to certify. All you need is some focus and an idea what to expect to build your confidence; this little study guide, complemented perhaps by studying with other test candidates, will take you the rest of the way.
    Rating: 5 / 5

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