10/17/2008

How to Study for Architect Certification, Part I

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Table of Content
My Test Results................................................................................................................3
What to Expect.................................................................................................................3
Topic Areas......................................................................................................................4
Example Questions from the Test....................................................................................5
References.......................................................................................................................6
Study Material..................................................................................................................6
Review Material...............................................................................................................8
FAQs................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
I studied for part 1 by forming a study group through the Norther Virginia Java User’s
Group (NOVAJUG, see the novajug yahoogroup (www.yahoogroups.com) and www.
novajug.org). I would not have read the necessary material to pass this test if it wasn’t for
the study group. When running a study group, the most effective technique to ensure that
the study group meetings are productive is for someone to create questions based on that
week’s reading material. During the meeting study group members take turns trying to
answer the questions in a round-robin fashion. I often have a different person prepare the
questions each week. However, if you want to ensure that you cover a certain amount of
material each week, you should consider creating the questions yourself each week and
prioritizing your questions so that you can limit the number of questions during the
meeting. We typically cover around 20 questions in a 2 hour meeting. This may seem
relatively low, but we often have some discussion and/or related questions come up after
each question. This is good as long as we stay on the topic and feel that we have touched
on the areas that we read. Don’t feel that you have to talk about everything that you read.
Just touch on the most important points that might be hard to remember in the future.

My Test Results
My overall score is 83%. Following is the “Section Analysis” from the examination score
report that you receive immediately after taking the test. Keep in mind that the number of
questions in each section vary quite a bit. There were 16 questions on EJBs and I’m not
sure which of those Sun considers to be EJB vs EJB Container Model question. I believe
there were 4 or 5 questions on Security. So, a 50% score in that section means that I got
something like 2 or of 4 questions correct.

Concepts 83%
Common Architectures 66%
Legacy Connectivity 80%
EJB 88%
EJB container Model 100%
Protocols 66%
Applicability of J2EE 66%
Design Patterns 100%
Messaging 100%
Internationalization 100%
Security 50%

What to Expect
The test was easier than I had expected. The questions seemed to test a very basic
understanding of the various topics covered by this exam. You might be able to pass by
reading an article on most topic areas with a little more reading on EJBs and GoF
patterns. However, you don’t need to even study EJBs and patterns in that much detail.

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Topic Areas
The following topic areas are not how Sun breaks it out. Rather, it is how I would break it
out in terms of the topics that you need to study. At least 16 out of the 48 questions on the
exam when I took it where related to EJBs. There were between 2 and 5 questions on all
other topic areas.

Topic Area Comments

Architecture Concepts and Terms General stuff like what affects scalability,
maintainability, availability. Also, things like HTTP
tunneling and screen scrappers.
Clustering You need to know what clustering is in general and
what quality attributes (e.g. scalability,
maintainability, etc. it affects). I have a general idea
what clustering is, but I didn’t read anything on
clustering and probably got a question or two wrong
as a result.
EJBs
Security Need to know very basic/general terms and concepts
about encryption. Also need to understand JDK 1.2
and possibly JDK 1.1 security model.
UML Had 3 or 4 very simple questions about UML
notation and terminology. The questions were about
class diagram notation and sequence diagram
notation. Very basic. You don’t need to read a whole
book or even most of a book to get these right. Just
review a summary of UML notation such as the front
and back pages of the UML Distilled book.
Patterns Very straight forward questions about the purpose of
simple patterns such as iterator, singleton and proxy.
Internationalization
Protocols Requires general understanding of SHTML, IIOP,
RMI-IIOP.
JMS Very basic questions that had to do with what is JMS
good for and the terms such as publish/subscribe,
topics, queues, point-to-point, asynchronous.
Firewalls/DNS Round-Robin Need to understand a little bit about firewalls and
DNS round-robin relate as well as what might
happen in different scenarios involving a client
trying to access some resource through a firewall on
a given ip address and port number considering what
the firewall is configured to allow/disallow and what
kind of firewall it is.

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Example Questions from the Test

These are example of actual questions from the test as best as I could remember them a
couple of hours after taking the exam. I don’t have the exact multiple choice options in
most cases, but the following questions should give you some idea how well you need to
know at least some of the topic areas. The questions were easier than I had expected for
the most part. The questions mostly tested your understanding of terms and concepts at a
high level.

The test will tell you how many correct answers there are for each question, and the
software will let you know if provide more or less answers than the expected amount.
The structure of the multiple choice test was helpful and made the test a little easier.
There are 48 questions on the test and you have 90 minutes to complete the test. I
finished with 20 minutes to spare and spent the extra time going over my answers. The
software allows you to skip questions and also mark questions. After answering question
48, you get a display showing the questions that you have skipped, are incomplete
because you didn’t provide as many answers as expected, as well as questions that you
have marked. You can then revisit any of the questions. The software also always displays
the amount of time you have remaining.

Question Comments/My Answer

Where is JNDI used in JSM?
What pattern does JDBC ResultSet
implement?
What aspect of firewalls affects the ability
of various protocols to get through. Three
of the possible answers were: port filtering,
address filtering and address translation.
What 2 services does EJBs provide? Three
of the 4 options were: life cycle
management, transaction services, remote
method invocation
Where would encryption be necessary in a
scenario where a buyer and a seller used a
web browser to buy and sell items on the
web and credit card info was verified by a
separate system. Items being sold are
stored in a database. Select 2 of the three
possible places: between buyer and server,
seller and server, server and credit card
authority.
What aspects of a system vary by locale?
What kind of operations should be
performed in ejbPassivate and ejbActivate
It is used to look up several of the key
objects in the JSM model.
Iterator
Not sure what is the right answer. Let me
know if you have an answer and please
give me a reference where I can find
documentation that supports the answer.
I believe the answer is life-cycle
management and transaction services. EJBs
do provide remote access, but it isn’t
considered a considered a service.
Where ever credit card info is passed which
is from buyer to system/database and
between system and credit card authority. I
don’t recall anything more specific than
this being asked about encryption. Some
questions that I can’t remember in detail
required knowledge of JDK security model
and I believe it touched on the differences
between JDK 1.1 and JDK 1.2 security
models.
String formats, dates, order that things are
sorted, how currency is displayed.
Free/restore connections to resources.

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on a stateful EJB?
One question tested my understanding of
EJB transaction attributes (not supported,
supported, required, required new, etc.)
One question required understanding of a
Handle object relative to EJBs.

References

Sun’s certification web site, http://suned.sun.com/US/certification/

This is where you will find the certification objectives and details about how to sign up to
take the test.

Scea_j2ee yahoo group (www.yahoogroups.com)

Good forum for asking questions about the exam and finding additional study material.

Study Material
Based on my experience studying for and taking the part 1 of the certification, here is
what I would suggest that you read before taking the exam. You could skip a couple of
the following references and still pass (don’t skip the EJBs though).

Material
Enterprise JavaBeans, 2nd Ed.,
by Richard Monson-Haefel,
O’Reilly, ISBN: 1-56592-869-
5 order to pass part 1. If you can find a more concise
EJB 1.1 Specification
Java Messaging Service
Tutorial, Chapters 1 & 2 (15
pages total)
http://java.sun.com/products/j
ms/tutorial/doc/jms_tutorialT
OC.html’
Fault Tolerance for CORBA-
based Distributed Computing.
http://dantanner.tripod.com/FT
.htm
Jguru article on
Internationalization
Usage
Read chapters 1 – 9 and discuss in a study group. Cover
around 50 – 60 pages per week. While this book is pretty
good, it goes into more detail than I think you need in
introduction to EJBs, you may be able to spend less time
studying EJBs. Some chapters are interesting in this book
while others seem very dry to me (however, still useful).
Forming a study group will really help you get through
this book and help you retain what you learn.
Reference from time to time while reading the EJB book
by Haefel for clarification.
Good intro to JMS and just about right for what you need
on the exam.
Nice short article that gives you the concepts.
Just about right for the exam. However, someone said that
there was a pretty good tutorial on Sun’s website. You

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http://d23xapp2.cn.ibm.com/d
eveloperworks/education/unic
ode/i18n_eng
Network Security: A Simple
Guide to Firewalls
http://www.3com/other/pdfs/i
nfra/corpinfo/en_US/5030900
1.pdf
JavaWorld article on RMI
over IIOP
http://www.javaworld.com/jav
aworld/jw-12/1999/jw-12-
iiop_p.html
Java Security Evolution and
Concepts, Part 1 and Part 2
http://www.javaworld.com/jav
aworld/jw-07-2000/jw-0728-
security_p.html
Introduction to SSL
http://developer.netscape.com/ one. I don’t recall any questions specifically about SSL on
docs/manuals/security/sslin/co the exam, but other people’s exam notes often include SSL
ntents.htm
The book Design Patterns by
Gamma, Helm, Johnson and
Vlissides (often referred to as that may be more than you need for the test. The questions
the Gang of Four (GoF)),
Adddison-Wesley
The Design Patterns Java
Companion
http://patterndepot.com/put/8/ book on any patterns that aren’t real clear to you after
might try Suns tutorial first. While pretty good, I thought
this article wasn’t as clear as it could have been. However,
it is about the right amount for the test.
Easy to read and short article that introduces the concepts
and terms of firewalls. Another article on firewalls in
addition or instead of this one would be useful. However, I
don’t know of any others.
Pretty good, but you might check for a related tutorial on
Suns website instead.
From my experience on the exam, you just need to know
very basic concepts and terminology about encryption and
security in general as well as something about JDK 1.2
security model and possibly the difference between JDK
1.1 and JDK 1.2 security models. You might want to read
another article about JDK security. However, I don’t have
any other references.
I’m not sure this one is necessary. Consider skipping this
suggesting that you might get a question on it.
Do not try to read this book front to back. I recommend
reading roughly the first four pages of each pattern and
were very basic, straight forward questions about the
easier to remember patterns such as singleton, proxy and
iterator. We covered 5 patterns per week discussing all
five patterns in one hour. We used the rest of the meeting
time to do practice exam questions on other topics. In
order to touch on 5 patterns in an hour, someone needs to
come prepared with discussion questions and lead the
discussion with quite a bit of authority without being
overbearing. The goal during the meeting is not to discuss
each pattern in detail, but to at least touch on each one
briefly. The primary benefit of the study group is that it
encourages you to read about the 5 patterns on your own
time because you know that you are going to come and
discuss it. You get the most benefit from the reading. The
meeting just encourages you to read and also helps you
retain what you learned.
This book illustrates the GoF patterns with
implementations in Java. Skim through the sections in this
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JavaPatterns.htm reading about them in the GoF. However, don’t spend too
much time on this book. Use it as a reference only.
UML Distilled Read the front and back covers and skim through as much
of the book as necessary to understand how the notation
on the front and back covers of the book is used.

Review Material
The following are summaries of the relevant topics. These items are useful for reviewing
just before taking the exam, but after you have read other material that cover the topics in
more detail.

Title Location
John Wetherbie’s notes for www.javaranch.com/ubb/Forum26/HTML/000441.html
SCEA Part 1
SCEA Quick Reference File section of Scea_j2ee yahoogroup.

FAQs

Is any J2EE design pattern on the exam? No. Just the GoF patterns and very easy
questions at that.

Were the mock exam questions that we found on the web similar to the questions on the
web? Not really. I think that the questions we made up to test ourselves during the course
of the study group were better questions. Our questions weren’t very similar to those on
the test, but our questions tests your knowledge better than the mock exams that we found
on the web.

Does the exam include JSP and Servlets? No.

Do I need to compile and run EJBs in addition to just reading about them in order to
pass part 1 of the Architect Certification? No. Just understand the terms and concepts and
what the various methods are used for.

How can you be sure you are ready to take the exam? I don’t know of a good way to
achieve this. I had no confidence in the mock exams that I found on the web. After taking
the test, I still believe that the mock exams on the web are not a very good measure. If
you know the general concepts and terms listed on Sun’s website as the objects for the
exam and you know EJBs terms and concepts pretty well, the you should be fine. When I
took the exam, I was tired of studying and wanted to take it to see where I stand. If I
failed, at least I would know what areas I need to study more. However, the questions
really were easier that I expected.

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