Sun Certified Enterprise Architect

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology (Step 2 of 3)

Product Outline/Details

The Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology (Step 2 of 3) certification exam is for enterprise architects responsible for architecting and designing Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform compliant applications, which are scalable, flexible and highly secure.

Description of the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect Assignment Exam

The Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE (SCEA) is intended for Java technology professionals responsible for architecting systems. It is expected but not mandatory that a person taking the SCEA exam has already passed the Java technology programmer and Java technology developer certifications. The SCEA exam is broken down into three parts. Part 1 is multiple choice and tests your knowledge in the areas of general architecture and J2EE. Part 2 is an assignment that tests your ability to apply the knowledge you were tested on in part 1. Part 3 is an essay that asks questions about your assignment.

Description of the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect Assignment

This is a description of the nature, scale, and scope of the problem you will be required to solve in the SCEA assignment. These notes do not form any part of the actual assignment, and if you find a contradiction between these notes and the actual assignment instructions, you must adhere to the instructions in the assignment documents.

Nature of the Assignment

The assignment requires that you architect a solution for a small but plausible business system. To keep the amount of work involved to a reasonable level, the programs you create will be much more restricted in capability, and much cruder in overall presentation, than anything you would actually create for a paying customer. However, the essence of the problem will be the same. You will be graded on correctly solving the technical and performance requirements, not on the "polish" of the finished product.

Scale of the Assignment

Obviously, the amount of time taken by a candidate to create a solution to the assignment varies greatly. A fast candidate might create a solution in about 40 hours, but a more typical time requirement might be about 80 hours. If you spend a lot more than 100 hours on the project, then you might be creating something that is more detailed than the requirement, or you are lacking some of the skills necessary to complete the assignment.

Scoring Criteria

Your project will be evaluated on a large number of objective criteria that fall into three categories:

1) Class Diagram: This category covers how well your class diagram(s) address the object model needed to satisfy the requirements.

2) Component Diagram: This category covers how well your component diagram(s) convey the structure of the architecture in satisfying the requirements.

3) Sequence/Collaboration Diagrams: This category covers how well your sequence or collaboration diagrams satisfy the requirements of the assignment.

Additionally, each category is evaluated on UML compliance.

The maximum number of possible points is 100. The minimum passing grade is 70. The maximum points per category are:

APIs Relevant to the Assignment

The assignment requires that you have an in-depth understanding of the Java programming language and J2EE APIs. You can choose to use any released version of the J2EE APIs.

Suggested Reading Materials

Mark Cade and Simon Roberts. Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology Study Guide, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, 2002.

Erich Gamma. Design Patterns, Boston: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995.

Richard Monson-Haefe. Enterprise JavaBeans, O'Reilly and Associates, 2001.

Martin Fowler. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Third Edition, Boston: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 2003.

• Delivered at: CertManager database
• Prerequisites: Successfull completion of the exam in Step 1 (CX-310-051)
• Other exams/assignments required for this certification: Step 1 (CX-310-051), Step 3 (CX-310-061)
• Exam type: Assignment
• Number of questions: N/A
• Pass score: 70%, subject to the evaluation of the Step 3 essay exam and
• validation of the authenticity of the assignment
• Time limit: None

• English, Japanese

Exam Objectives

• Draw UML Diagrams
• Interpret UML diagrams.
• State the effect of encapsulation, inheritance, and use of interfaces on architectural characteristics.

• Recognize the effect on each of the following characteristics of two tier, three tier and multi-tier architectures: scalability maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security.
• Recognize the effect of each of the following characteristics on J2EE technology: scalability maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, manageability, and security.
• Given an architecture described in terms of network layout, list benefits and potential weaknesses associated with it.

• Distinguish appropriate from inappropriate techniques for providing access to a legacy system from Java code given an outline description of that legacy system

• List the required classes/interfaces that must be provided for an EJB.
• Distinguish stateful and stateless Session beans.
• Distinguish Session and Entity beans.
• Recognize appropriate uses for Entity, Stateful Session, and Stateless Session beans.
• State benefits and costs of Container Managed Persistence.
• State the transactional behavior in a given scenario for an enterprise bean method with a specified transactional deployment descriptor.
• Given a requirement specification detailing security and flexibility needs, identify architectures that would fulfill those requirements.
• Identify costs and benefits of using an intermediate data-access object between an entity bean and the data resource.

• State the benefits of bean pooling in an EJB container.
• State the benefits of Passivation in an EJB container.
• State the benefit of monitoring of resources in an EJB container.
• Explain how the EJB container does lifecycle management and has the capability to increase scalability.

• Given a scenario description, distinguish appropriate from inappropriate protocols to implement that scenario.
• Identify a protocol, given a list of some of its features, where the protocol is one of the following: HTTP, HTTPS, IIOP, JRMP.
• Select from a list, common firewall features that might interfere with the normal operation of a given protocol.

• Select from a list those application aspects that are suited to implementation using J2EE.
• Select from a list those application aspects that are suited to implementation using EJB.
• Identify suitable J2EE technologies for the implementation of specified application aspects.

• Identify scenarios that are appropriate to implementation using messaging, EJB, or both.
• List benefits of synchronous and asynchronous messaging.
• Select scenarios from a list that are appropriate to implementation using synchronous and asynchronous messaging.

• State three aspects of any application that might need to be varied or customized in different deployment locales.
• Match the following features of the Java 2 platform with descriptions of their functionality, purpose or typical uses: Properties, Locale, ResourceBundle, Unicode, java.text package, InputStreamReader and OutputStreamWriter.

• Select from a list security restrictions that Java 2 environments normally impose on applets running in a browser.
• Given an architectural system specification, identify appropriate locations for implementation of specified security features, and select suitable technologies for implementation of those features.