After passing part I on Aug 29 2011, the next day I immediately downloaded the assignment Big Smoke Cigar Shop from Pearson Vue website.I had very less time in doing the assignment as Oct 1st was approaching.I couldnot estimate exam depth until I read the assignment completely. I read it several times to understand what exactly to do for the assignment. I read prvious examinees experiences to understand the the assgnement in detail.
To a great extent I followed “Mark Cade and Humphrey Sheil’s Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java™ EE Study Guide(2nd edition)” for all the deliverable.
What is expected in part 2? Component Diagram(40 points) Class Diagram(40 points) Sequence Diagram(16 points) Deployment Diagram(24 points) Assumptions and Design decisions(Extras) Technical Risks and mitigation(16 points) Other diagrams and sections(Extras)
Before starting on the assignment I first read Head First Design Patterns for refreshing my knowledge. Parallel to this I was reading the assignment again and again. I was also making notes for assumption, design decision, risks involved so that I should not miss them in documenting them in assignment.
I used Visual Paradigm tool community edition for UML diagram. I came to know about it from Java Ranch forum. It is very good open source UML tool. I could export the diagram as images very easily. Make sure that your UML diagrams are not cluttered. If they are getting cluttered, better to divide them into smaller parts.
While doing assignment I had to think alot on how to design a system that would handle both functional and non-functional requirements. Particularly the authentication and authorization part, I spent lot of time in creating interactions but after careful analysis found that this system can be external and safely written under assumptions list.
My class diagram had 38 classes with lot of comments explaining the use if the class and 8 JSF pages Class Diagram -1 Sequence diagrams – 5 component diagram – 1 Deployment diagram – 1 Listed 12 risks for the system and explained how these can be mitigated.
Also specified the architecture overview, design patterns used and enhancements that can be done in future. Used SeaMonkey for creating the assignment HTML.
I had not enough time to complete the assignment. I got only 3 weeks to complete the assignment. I spent 2 days with my colleagues/peers to review my assignment and incorporated their feedback. It will be good if you engage your peers to review your assignment. This way I really got their valuable feedback and I corrected some of the errors or confusions in the assignment. Submitted the assignment on Sept 24, 2011 and took Part-3 Essay exam on Sept 27, 2011.
Part 3 consists of 8 questions and of the duration 2 hours. It’s all about defending your architecture. It’s objective to verify that it’s you who did this assignment plus it will help the evaluator to understand your assignment better.There are some questions where answers can overlap.You can copy-paste the contents from one question to another.Some questions were about NFRsNon functional requirements while others were explaining why certain alternatives weren’t better than others. They might also ask you why you have used certain Design patterns.
They evaluate part 2 and part 3 at the same time and grade it together.
You can make assumptions to simplify SuD. So don’t worry. One can change the Business Domain Model to some extent. I can say some 20% changes are okay but don’t forget to justify those changes. One need to be good in UML modeling. Think more about solving the business problem rather than worrying too much about JEE Technical stack. JEE Technical stack is very standard and well defined. Don’t change the problem statement in your SuD.
Ever since that day, I was checking my email regularly and waiting eagerly for the results. Finally I received email from Oracle that I passed on Dec 08, 2011.
At last certified in OCMJEA/SCEA. Best of luck for SCEA5 aspirants!!!