Rating:  - a writer from Santa Monica CA
Finally a book that fits its title. This one covers the SCEA 310-051 exam well. It has lots of useful practice exercises; usuable even for the oh so critical technical interview. The chapters concentrate on the exam objectives as published by SUN. It complements the the "J2EE Unleashed" book (by the same authors) which is focused on the J2EE development life cycle and has some great real life examples. The CD-ROM is valuable in and of itself as it has two practice exams and pdf's of the chapter content. The J2EE case study is a real-life J2EE architecture is a good example of a service style SOA application involving connectivity on Mainframe.
This is a worthwhile purchase.
Rating:  - Not a J2EE book
The table of contents is attractive. But the coverage of each topic is very shallow. A lot of pages filled in with just fluff, not technical matter. Anyone with some years of J2EE experience can immediately see that the authors have never worked with J2EE technology. The book seems to be a collection of technical articles covering different aspects of J2EE technology. Also there is a lot of repetition of material. This book needs better editing.
But again this is a book covering the SCEA exam objectives, not J2EE.
I gave 3 stars just because: (i) the book makes an attempt to cover all the objectives of SCEA exam, and (ii) it includes the CD-ROM with the pdf version of book and practice tests.
As a practicing J2EE Architect/Developer I would recommend to read individual books that cover separate SCEA exam topics. Use the other SCEA book available in the market to summarize your study. It sounds like a lot but if you are experienced in J2EE it should be relatively easy. If you don't have J2EE experience then you may like this book but in reality you will remain as uninformed about J2EE after you finish reading this book as you were before reading it.
Some good books to follow: UML distilled, EJB book by Richard Monson(O'Reilley) or the one by Ed Roman, Java Security (O'Reilley),Design Patterns (Gang of four) or just follow the SCEA study guide by Mark and Simon.
Rating:  - Clear explanations and the right focus on exam objectives
This study guide is the second book on SCEA available from the market.
It covers all the main topics for the SCEA 310-051 exams, with step-by-step instruction, and 2 sets of practice exercises. Chapters concentrate on the basic J2EE concepts, common architectures, legacy connectivity, EJB and its container model, protocols, applicability of J2EE, design patterns and messaging. Besides that, a J2EE case study is provided in the last chapter. The companion CD-ROM contains two sets of practice tests and a pdf-version of the study guide.
For a SCEA candidate, it is normally a challenge of using UML and J2EE together in the SCEA part 2. Unfortunately, this topic is missing in the book.
The J2EE case study chooses a real-life J2EE architecture, which involves legacy connectivity on Mainframe. This example is absolutely helpful on the SCEA part 2. However, it would be better if the authors could illustrate the pros and cons of specific design approaches.
Near 100 challenging practice questions are provided in the Mock Exam. They are closely modeling the format, tone, topics, and difficulty of the real exam.
Since it's the one of the only two books available, I suggest you go through this book. However, you should also learn the specific subjects from practice or from other corresponding books.
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