Thursday, August 05, 2004
So I thought I should share my 2 cents on SCEA and certification processes overall.
Here is my certification path
SCJP -> SCWCD -> SCBCD (Beta) -> IBM 484 (Beta) -> Brainbench J2EE -> Brainbench EJB 2.0 -> SCEA Part I -> IBM 486 -> IBM 287 -> SCEA II -> SCEA III
I felt the IBM Certified Enterprise Developer certification was tougher than SCEA. The only thing lacking in the IBM certification process is probably the Design Assignment.
SCEA Part I is a piece of cake. Its way too easy than it should be. SCEA Part III doesn't make any sense to me. It should be a part of the Part II piece. Its not fair to ask 150$ for a 15 min exam! Part II is the real deal in the exam. Gotta apply your skills as an architect.
I used Rational Rose for Class and Component Diagrams and MagicDraw for the Sequence diagrams. Again the marking scheme is weird. Class Diagrams and Component Diagrams 44 marks each and Sequence Diagrams which will take up more than 50% of your time, just 12 marks. I evaluated about 5-6 UML tools before I could get my sequence diagrams in order. Class Diagrams and Component Diagrams are pretty straight forward to draw in every tool. Sequence diagrams could be tricky at times.
I referred to Cade's book for tips on Part II diagrams. There is sufficient material on the internet for Part I so I guess everybody who reads this stuff will be more than ready for Part I.
The only thing I couldn't find was sample UML Diagrams so I decided I would put a Generic Component Diagram for everyone's benefit (since most of the people are not sure what to put in this)!
Also If you really wanna test your skills on UML try taking the IBM OOAD with UML exam. Its really good, plus it has lot of real world questions on situations like how to refactor the code, use cases etc.
Here is my certification path
SCJP -> SCWCD -> SCBCD (Beta) -> IBM 484 (Beta) -> Brainbench J2EE -> Brainbench EJB 2.0 -> SCEA Part I -> IBM 486 -> IBM 287 -> SCEA II -> SCEA III
I felt the IBM Certified Enterprise Developer certification was tougher than SCEA. The only thing lacking in the IBM certification process is probably the Design Assignment.
SCEA Part I is a piece of cake. Its way too easy than it should be. SCEA Part III doesn't make any sense to me. It should be a part of the Part II piece. Its not fair to ask 150$ for a 15 min exam! Part II is the real deal in the exam. Gotta apply your skills as an architect.
I used Rational Rose for Class and Component Diagrams and MagicDraw for the Sequence diagrams. Again the marking scheme is weird. Class Diagrams and Component Diagrams 44 marks each and Sequence Diagrams which will take up more than 50% of your time, just 12 marks. I evaluated about 5-6 UML tools before I could get my sequence diagrams in order. Class Diagrams and Component Diagrams are pretty straight forward to draw in every tool. Sequence diagrams could be tricky at times.
I referred to Cade's book for tips on Part II diagrams. There is sufficient material on the internet for Part I so I guess everybody who reads this stuff will be more than ready for Part I.
The only thing I couldn't find was sample UML Diagrams so I decided I would put a Generic Component Diagram for everyone's benefit (since most of the people are not sure what to put in this)!
Also If you really wanna test your skills on UML try taking the IBM OOAD with UML exam. Its really good, plus it has lot of real world questions on situations like how to refactor the code, use cases etc.
