Customer Reviews

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Study Guide (Exam 310-051)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I bought this book despite the other poor reviews on amazon. I was hopeful that the other reviewers were just being too harsh. But after reading the first couple chapters, it became clear that the other reviewers were being charitable. This book is filled with errors and is poorly organized.
The worst error I've spotted is on p16. The book says that "The current version of the SCEA exam tests your knowledge of J2EE 1.3 API." In fact, at the time I'm writing this review, and certainly at the time they wrote the book, the current version of the exam is still testing the J2EE 1.2 API. That is pretty bad when the course authors don't even know which version of J2EE they should be writing about. It also would be quite detrimental and confusing to readers who would assume they should be studying topics that were added in the J2EE 1.3 version.
In many places, the book also does not seem to be well synched with the topics, approach, and vocabulary of the exam. Some chapters seemed almost irrelevant to the exam.
If you buy this book, you should only consider it a supplement to help give you a general idea of what you need to study. I would suggest doing most of your studying with other books or resources.

I agree with the other reviewers that this book is very poorly written. After reading the first few chapters and have found a half dozen spelling mistakes and several sentences that don't make sense, you have to know that this book was rushed out the door.

What's worse than that for your typical SCEA candidate is the amount of time that is wasted with repetitive or unnecessary information. I've got very little time in my day to read books, and the last thing I need is an author inserting fluff around the core material just to make the book look bigger. This "user-friendly" writing style is best kept in the "X For Dummies" series, and kept out of books for busy professionals.

The other SCEA book (Cade and Roberts) is a much better buy. I'd recommend buying only that one and supplementing it with other subject-specific books (EJB, UML, Patterns) instead of wasting your money and time with this one.

This is one of those books that looks good on the store shelf. It appears to cover all of the certification objectives. It has a CD that promises mock exams. Unfortunately the book is very poorly written. It doesn't seem as though the authors really understand what they are talking about, and instead are cobbling together material from other sources: Starting with the introductory material, the descriptions of the concepts of architecture and design are terrible muddled. Also, I have never read such poor descriptions of the GoF design patterns. The EJB material is scattered and poorly organized. Finally a bunch of mostly useless Java code is thrown in, presumably to make the book seem more authoritative. Througout, this book seems to repeat the same material over and over again. The back of the book promises an "exam watch - warnings based on thorough post-exam research identifying the most troublesome exam topics." This sounds useful, but appears nowhere in the book as far as I can tell.

I would suggest simply buying the Sun press study guide by Mark Cade and Simon Roberts. It is not "complete" but the material is very well written, and you can go on the Web to find other people's study notes and mock exams to complement your review of the material.

I have read dry and flat technical books before, but this one stands out as being unusually so. There is no passion for the subject here and it is the kind of book that does not make an impact. What really makes for a good architecture is not something that is really discussed and things that require further explanation often seem nipped in the bud. You are not going to get a feel for the nuances of J2EE architecture with this book, and I think it is when you understand those, your retention and grasp go up a great deal. Only then can you weigh options and consider the alternatives intelligently. Sorry guys, I think you needed a bit more time to organize and explain the material more fully. I also think the consistent, machine like quality of the prose detaches the reader rather than pull them in. Some may get what they want from this book, but it was not a book I enjoyed nor one that gave me much insight. Many facts are here and stated, but the pie was not finished when it was pulled from the oven.

I just passed SCEA part I with score 81. I used this book to prepare my exam. I agree with other reviewers, this is a poorly written book. A lot questions from the book are duplicated and have wrong answers. But I do think the mock exam is a bit of helpful. It is close to the real exam, but the real exam has much more scenario questions. It will help you control time and familar with the testing environment. The bottom line is that you can not depend on this book to pass the exam. Here are some suggested materials:Enterprise JavaBeans (3rd Edition) and Java Message Service by Richard Monson-Haefel,SCEA yahoo group.

Good luck!

Right from the start the book lacks a smooth flow and a sense of purpose. It rambles on and on about the greatness of all things irrelevant (from the exam point of view). The chapter on architecture never seems to end and before we know it we are being told about the parameters and bad practices when it is not clear in the first place what constitutes an architecture. The authors chose to quote some standard definitions but that does not cut it.

There is a chapter on UML which doesn't state anything in precise terms. This is the trend through out the book.

There is a chapter on design patterns and this is an example of how not to teach things. The authors write tons and tons of code detailing what could have been explained by a simple UML diagram. After all UML is on the exam and the chapter on UML precedes the chapter on design patterns. Most of the examples are meaningless.

Then there is a chapter on legacy connectivity which talks about JCA in the text but asks questions about everything non-JCA! This is written for somebody who is aware of JCA. This is not required for the exam. Since I was new to subject matter, I read the specification which like most specs from Sun is really written well and was an easy reading. When I went back to the book, things made sense.

The same patterns are repeated in the chapters on Security, EJB and Internationalization.

If I were to do it again, I wouldn't even touch this book. The books by Richard Monson-Hafael and Cade and Roberts are more than sufficient for the exam. For everything else, there is the spec which should be read at some point anyway.

Most people who take this exam are short of time and the kind of useless diversions offered by the book only waste time.

This examination resembles written exams taken by medical students where the subject matter is vast and trying to cover everything leads to a shallow knowledge. Just as there, the goals here are very clear and if one focuses on knowing the key points, one can reconstitute all the other material by reasoning. This book fails to emphasize the key points. Cade and Roberts do exactly that and that is the difference between a good book and this which is destined to be a door stop.

The book has both good and bad in an unwanted blend. It is good because, it tries to cover each and every objective of the exam by name and reminds the exam at each point. It even tries to discuss the objective.

It is bad because it fails to show the required information in required form. The UML chapter (Chapter 3) starts with the explanation on OOA&D, which is irrelevant for the exam. The person who is ready to get certified as an architect from SUN would have obviously spent enough time in software development and be aware of the terms the book tries to explain.

If we think that it is OK, to our surprise there is no figure for the elements of UML (Example class, package, collaboration etc.,). The book tries to write 1000 words but does not show a figure for the same. Hope the authors do believe that a picture is worth 1000 words.

Even the figures that follow for other topics are not up to the mark. For example, a single class is shown in maximum size and the title says it is a class diagram. As per my knowledge, the class is just an element of a class diagram and not a diagram by itself.

The book never tries to be product neutral. It always tries to force the user to know about web-logic. More pathetically, the code is only for Weblogic and that too for a specific version. I am disappointed with this to a greater extent.

In my opinion, the book needs one more parse to make it ready for only architects.

I have been working with Java and J2EE for 5 years now, and after reading the majority of this book, and I can honestly say that most of the content in this book is easily obtained from the Sun Tutorials and also the J2EE specifications for each individual J2EE technology (EJB, JTS, JNDI, JCA, etc). I was practically flying through the chapters because I knew the material.

In general, I was most dissapointed by the following...

Individual Chapters are unorganized
The authors of this book wrote the chapters using very strange methods. They often jump around topics, leaving the reader confused.

Content is repeated, wasting pages...
This was very annoying. Every single chapter contains sections that are often repeated over and over again. To give an example, the chapter on design patterns contains a table that names each GoF design pattern with a brief description, but to my surprise, this table is repeated 3 times in the same chapter!! The only explanation I have for this is that the authors wanted to "fluff" the book so as to increase its size, making it appear as though it is very comprehensive, but believe me, it's not. To give another example, the chapter on EJB's contains a code snippet which actually dedicates about 5 to 6 pages of the book to display the output of the code, which is simply a bunch of wasted println statements. Now I ask you, what will you learn from reading this code output? Absolutely nothing, plain and simple, and that should be obvious because this is an architect exam, not a programmers exam.

Sample questions too easy, contain errors
Each chapter has about 15 to 20 sample questions that are very easy, especially for someone who has written a distributed system using J2EE. I will also say that a small amount of the sample questions are flat out wrong and contain errors.

Ok, those are the bad things about this book. Now, here are the good things...

Currently, there are not too many books to choose from when preparing for the Sun Enterprise Archictect exam, so this book is a good start, but don't stop there! :-)

There is also a CD that is packaged with this book that contains 2 practice exams (multiple choice) that are conducted online and are very similar to the way the actual exam is conducted, and the questions are difficult and you will no doubt get creamed on these questions when you take the practice exam the first few times.

So, to conclude, this book should be a small part of your arsenal when preparing for the SCEA Part 1 exam, but you should also read other material, you will definitely need it.

[...]

Good luck,

SAF

The table of contents is attractive. But the coverage of each topic is very shallow. A lot of pages filled in with just fluff, not technical matter. Anyone with some years of J2EE experience can immediately see that the authors have never worked with J2EE technology. The book seems to be a collection of technical articles covering different aspects of J2EE technology. Also there is a lot of repetition of material. This book needs better editing.
But again this is a book covering the SCEA exam objectives, not J2EE.
I gave 3 stars just because: (i) the book makes an attempt to cover all the objectives of SCEA exam, and (ii) it includes the CD-ROM with the pdf version of book and practice tests.
As a practicing J2EE Architect/Developer I would recommend to read individual books that cover separate SCEA exam topics. Use the other SCEA book available in the market to summarize your study. It sounds like a lot but if you are experienced in J2EE it should be relatively easy. If you don't have J2EE experience then you may like this book but in reality you will remain as uninformed about J2EE after you finish reading this book as you were before reading it.
Some good books to follow: UML distilled, EJB book by Richard Monson(O'Reilley) or the one by Ed Roman, Java Security (O'Reilley),Design Patterns (Gang of four) or just follow the SCEA study guide by Mark and Simon.

This study guide is the second book on SCEA available from the market.

It covers all the main topics for the SCEA 310-051 exams, with step-by-step instruction, and 2 sets of practice exercises. Chapters concentrate on the basic J2EE concepts, common architectures, legacy connectivity, EJB and its container model, protocols, applicability of J2EE, design patterns and messaging. Besides that, a J2EE case study is provided in the last chapter. The companion CD-ROM contains two sets of practice tests and a pdf-version of the study guide.

For a SCEA candidate, it is normally a challenge of using UML and J2EE together in the SCEA part 2. Unfortunately, this topic is missing in the book.

The J2EE case study chooses a real-life J2EE architecture, which involves legacy connectivity on Mainframe. This example is absolutely helpful on the SCEA part 2. However, it would be better if the authors could illustrate the pros and cons of specific design approaches.

Near 100 challenging practice questions are provided in the Mock Exam. They are closely modeling the format, tone, topics, and difficulty of the real exam.

Since it's the one of the only two books available, I suggest you go through this book. However, you should also learn the specific subjects from practice or from other corresponding books.