Feedback on Question Pattern

These were collected off different sites from comments of people who did the Free SCBCD 5.0 beta exam.

Persistence, Entity Beans, Query Language,Transactions (50% of Questions)
Session bean (15%)
Message driven Bean (15%)
Security (6%)
Others(14%)

Initially there were few survey questions (around 11). There are total 180 questions for the exam. Time: 5 hours.

Have good understanding on basic concepts. Concentrate more on Entity Beans/Peristance, Query Language and Transactions. There were also a couple of Task oriented questions in addition to the usual objective type questions. Exam is very tough.

I had prepared using Mastering EJB and Specs. Please do not rely on Mastering for Entity or Persistence I would rather suggest to go for Persistence specs from Sun, agreed they are bit difficult to understand but worth.

1) Focus on Entities, EJB-QL (Existing features + enhancements).

2) Know annotations well.

3) You can easily get through the questions on Session beans, MDBs, Security, Exceptions, Transaction just don't ignore anything while you are studying...

4) Keep cool during exam, you have 5 hours so plan your strategy accordingly. You must finish 36 questions every hour to be in pace. Keep a watch on your pace to avoid last hour rush.

5) Don't waste time on tough questions just go ahead with the next, keep a note of those to be later if time permits.

Start studies with Mastering EJB 3.0, it is very useful to get aquainted with the concepts. You have to study only first 12 chapters if you are focussing only for certification. In addition with this use specs(EJB core and persistence). You can finish 12 chapters of Mastering easily in 10 days, and then use rest of the time to study Entity, persistence and Exceptions. It is good to know relationship between elements in DD and annotations and overriding rules. I would suggest to spend more time of annotation than DD. Lastly you need to have good understanding of persistence.xml

In fact in Chaper 11, you can skip around 25-35 pages and read only part relevant to EJB exam. Read Headfirst EJB book for prior version for Security. It is oriented more towards exam and I believe it covers Security details in good depth. Mastering doesn't cover it in enough depth for exam.

I believe you can skip the Chapter 7 to 11 from Specs and read sections relevant only to EJB3.0 But some of the concepts in EJB3.0 are based on prior versions so just browse through once. Try to get in depth information about BMP, CMP and EJB-QL.

From Headfirst you can study following topics.

1) Transaction

2) Exceptions

3) Security Management

4) Message Driven Beans (Only conceptual part and their lifecycle, information about clients and type of subscribers supported.)

Make sure you refer to corresponding annotations for the new version. This will be solid enough to answer any questions in this area. For topics like- Persistence, Entity Beans, EJB Query Language (which comprises 50% of Questions) I would recommend EJB 3.0 by Orielly.