Rating:  - Good time waste
I purchased this book last month. In one month, I am able to read only two chapters of this book. This book is not organized properly. It has more than 500 pages of boring essays. This certification is for java developers not law makers. Chapters has been made big by repeating the same lines but in different ways. After reading the whole chapter, I always felt like I have read two - three lines of info. It should be technically organized for example more diagrams, making list of technical points, using bullets.
Rating:  - Not so great; has errors, repeated content, unorganized...
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
Rating:  - J2EE Enterprise Architect study guide
Terribly written book. While the TOC look good the content is woolly and not very specific from a technical standpoint. The 2 minute drills are way too short and the chapter questions are not comprehensive - and many of the answers are wrong. Lots of typos and not very readable. Using this study guide will not help you pass the exam - dont waste your money... Clearly the authors didnt have a clue and the whole thing looks rushed and never proof read.
Rating: - Disappointing
At the first glance, the book appeared to cover all of the certification objectives. But to my disappointment, I found that the book is very badly written. The concepts are not organized logically and a lot of sentences are repeated verbatim. The authors keeps on rambling about various things without making any clear point. Don't waste your money on this one.
Rating:  - real good start towards SCEA certification
This one brings you up to speed w the SCEA 310-051 exam. It has practice exams (3) which are fairly comprehensive. The CD-ROM is valuable for someone on the go; it has pdf's of the chapter content. The J2EE stuff is good for introduction and background. Other books may be needed to fill the gaps. Good ROI on this book.
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