SCEA - Sun Certified Enterprise Architect - Oracle Certified Master, Java EE 5 Enterprise Architect

I want to share my experience of becoming an SCEA or now OCM for Java. I guess SCEA was the ultimate goal for many java developers who wanted to become architects.

When I started the preparations in 2010, it was SCEA which had 3 parts

1) Online test
2) Assignment
3) Essay

Now it became OCM - Java EE 5 and they introduced a training as well before online test for a hefty price in the range of $2000-$3000. I am not sure whether people are really interested in this exam any more.

The online test - It is a multiple choice question for 2 hours. It contains 64 questions and passing score is 57%. We need to prepare for 8 topics

1) Section 1: Application Design Concepts and Principles
2) Section 2: Common Architectures
3) Section 3: Integration and Messaging
4) Section 4: Business Tier Technologies
5) Section 5: Web Tier Technologies
6) Section 6: Applicability of Java EE Technology
7) Section 7: Patterns
8) Section 8: Security

This exam can be daunting but I found it rather not very difficult once you really start the preparation. You can prepare with the materials you have in online. Code ranch has a wonderful forum where you can find wealth of information ( http://www.coderanch.com/t/562482/java-Architect-SCEA/certification/suggestions-SCEA-preparation ). I also bought the exam kit from whiz labs ( http://www.whizlabs.com/scea/scea.html ) where you can practice and it will clearly let you know the areas of improvement. It had multiple mock exams and you can try 2 or 3 before the final day of the exam. On the final day or day before that, try the remaining two.

I took the exam in Sep 2010 and I passed the exam with 80% score and then I didn't attempt the essay exam for one year. When I took it up in Jan 2012 I used the book Certified Enterprise Architect Study Guide (http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Enterprise-Architect-Study-Guide/dp/0131482033) and it was ultimate. The reason is, the book is not very big and it was written by the exam authors themselves. So the assignment examples published in the book are pretty simple and neat. I just used this book as guide and prepared for the exam. Once you pay the money for exam, earlier they used to send the assignment in mail which you need to complete and upload in the website. I guess now it is changed.

I was very worried about the assignment but it is not that hard. But it needs time as you need to prepare each and every diagram with enough details.

1) Class diagram
2) Sequence diagram - You have to prepare many for each use case
3) Component diagram
4) Deployment diagram (I found a nice example in weblogic server site but I could not find it now)

I used Enterprise Architect tool to create these diagrams.  You can use Rational tools as well. I am not sure are there any good open source tools also to do this. Again you can get plenty of advice on Code ranch. You can't discuss about your exact problem but you can get the general questions clarified. Finally I completed the assignment after one week of hard work (I took off from office and worked on it for a week) and uploaded.

Then the final essay exam. You need to take the exam in authorized center and it mainly talks about the design choices you made and your deliverables. This one is easy if you take this exam with in a week of your submission. No need to prepare anything you just go to the center and then say it in writing the reasons behind your architecture or design. I did it with in a week and then waited for the result.

Whola, after a week I got the most anticipated mail that I have cleared the exam. But unfortunately I waited for too long to take the assignment exam so I also need to go through the class room training to get my final certification. It is so costly (costlier than all the 3 exam's put together) I am wondering whether to take it or not.

Now everything moved towards Scrum, Agile and Spring so I am wondering whether this exam has the same popularity and respect it used to have once. I am not creating class diagram, sequence diagrams any more and also not using the Java EE stack at all. This training only suitable for people who are 3-4 years experience in Java but not for people who have more than 10 years experience (SE 7 is one training!!!).