Friday, July 22, 2011

Passed Oracle certified master Java EE 5 Enterprise Architect (SCEA)


Suddenly I realized one day that my SUN exam Voucher was set on expire on 2nd week of Nov/2011. I had very less time(2 weeks) to prepare for the exam. Earlier exam preparation for Java Web Component developer, Java Web services developer helped me alot. Gathered all the material, but my weakness was EJBs as I didnot have prior experience with EJB also.

So brought 'Head first EJB' went thru sample questions from Whiz labs.

I wrote the SCEA-part1 exam on 10/Nov/2011 passed. Score was not so great but felt happy for making an attempt in less time.

I never thought that I would attempt the Java Architect exam so early in life. I would like to thank my Father who always insisted that commitment itself would take you to success.

Next month only (dec-2010), I downloaded the assignment Big Smoke Cigar Shop from Sun website. Believe me, I had not read the assignment completely until Feb-2011 (due to laziness). Due to future commitments in life, I thought I would finish it by April-2011.

Again EJBs was my weak part, so I thought I would prepare/understand them first and later start on assignment.

J2EE books I referred while completing the assignement:
  1. Core J2EE patterns
  2. Head First EJB
  3. EJB 3 in action
  4. JavaEE6 - SUN
  5. J2EE tutorial
  6. Designing Enterprise Applications

Important thing to mention here about coderanch role in exam. I got lot of answers to my questions from here. Thanks to

http://www.coderanch.com/how-to/java/SceaFaq
http://www.coderanch.com/forums/f-26/java-Architect-SCEA

I have started preparing for this exam in Feb-2011 and I couldnot estimate exam depth until I read the assignment completely. I had to read it several times to understand what exactly to do for the assignment. I read prvious examinees experiences to get knack of the assgnement.


I have good experitse and interest in Object oriented analysis and design. I do have certifications on IBM rational Object oriented analysis and UML diagrams.

But the expectations of SCEA assignment was different from what I learnt. Particularly showing J2EE interactions upto JSP level very complex in UML.
I used Astah community edition (earlier known as Jude) for UML diagrams. (astah.net/editions/community). I choosed this because I was familiar with this already and I read some SCEA aspirants already used it.

While doing assignment I had to think alot on how to design a system that would handle both functional and non-functional requirements. Particularly the authentication and authorization part, I spent lot of time in creating interactions but after careful analysis found that this system can be external and safely written under assumptions list.

My class diagram had 47 classes with lot of comments explaining the use if the class. Basically I did not create a separate section in assignment which explains the classes.
  1. Class Diagram -1
  2. Sequence diagrams - 12
  3. component diagram - 1
  4. Deployment diagram - 1
  5. Listed 7 risks for the system and explained how these can be mitigated.
  6. Added 2 sections explaining 'design patterns used in various tiers' and 'application integration points to external systems'

    Used SeaMonkey for creating the assignment HTML, to overcome large image size issues, used image compression in GIMP.

    It took me 3months to complete the assignment. Took Part-3 Essay exam on 02/Apr/2011 and submitted assignment on 02/May/2011. I received  email from Oracle that I passed on 13/July/2011.

    Finally certified in SCEA.

    1 comment:

    1. Hi Bhanu,

      Congratulations!

      I also have the Big Smokes cigar, just wondering if you have some time to review my assignment!.

      Many thanks,
      Zaid

      ReplyDelete