Yes, this book seems to be quite simple and informative,Just has what you wanted to get certified as an Architecture for J2EE.

Its a good book..but is very short....its more like a review of things rather than expanding knowledge..

This book was helpful as review, but not overly helpful as a start to finish guide.

This is a good book to show you the basics for the exam. You will need to read the additional reading suggestons to be fully prepared.

I primarily purchased this book for Review for SCEA exam.

It provides a complete review of Architecture, J2EE Overview, Documentation, Design Patterns, Security, Internationalization, Protocols, and impotantly, Case Study.

Reading these chapters and working the Case Study, helped me understand the entire overall concept as well as, enough details so I could understand my short commings. Therefore the references listed in this book to other books with more details are very useful.

I think that this book is very important for the technical people getting ready for SCEA test, but it is MORE:

1. It can be great help for managers to get an excellent understanding, and
2. It is also great help for detail code developers to get a good taste of the overall and higher level view of the entire J2EE!

I hope that the authors are working on the next revision.

Too Expensive for such a short book. Its like a review of a real book.

If your primary objective is obtaining the SCEA certification, this book is a powerful guideline for passing the SCEA exam. It contains interesting tips that can help you.
However, if your objective is collecting information about take architecture decisions, you must read more specifics books.

If your primary objective is obtaining the SCEA certification, this book is a powerful guideline for passing the SCEA exam. It contains interesting tips that can help you.
However, if your objective is collecting information about take architecture decisions, you must read more specifics books.

It is very good book for the people who would like to understand the exam's subject.

I purcahse this book with some other expectations.
The book cover all the subject in the exam but in a poorly way.

The main intention of the book is to prepare a reader for SCEA exam. It covers all exam objectives except Legacy systems and Messaging. There is also very useful use case study for second part of the exam. The book underlines the most important behaviour of Java components. It is almost unbelievable how authors succeded to get all important information in just 180 pages. The book is very usefull for all people who want to design projects with qualities of experienced J2EE architect. Major part of the book is about EJB, UML and design patterns. Especially if you come from a development area you get a new view how to build overall architecture of J2EE projects and how to connect them with existing legacy systems.

The book gives a good brief review on SECA objectives and iterates through each topic in the exam. At the end, there is a sample project for the preparation of part II of the exam.

If you know J2EE very well, the book serves as quick overview to further enhance the knowledge or identify the weakness you have as regard to the exam. But if you are a less experienced developer/architect wishing to pass the exam, the book by itself is not enough.

I recently passed the CX-310-051 exam and relied heavily on this book as a study guide. In my opinion, purchasing this book is a virtual necessity and I highly recommend it. It is well written, succinct and packed with useful information.

Reading this book will not teach you all that is required to actually perform as an enterprise architect, however, it will help you to focus and identify the material you need to study in preparation for the exam.

My only criticism of the book is that it needs to be brought up-to-date with respect to the new J2EE technologies that have emerged since it was published in 2002. Also, I personally would like to see more practice questions, or ideally, a practice exam included on a CD.

I recently passed the CX-310-051 exam and relied heavily on this book as a study guide. In my opinion, purchasing this book is a virtual necessity and I highly recommend it. It is well written, succinct and packed with useful information.

Reading this book will not teach you all that is required to actually perform as an enterprise architect, however, it will help you to focus and identify the material you need to study in preparation for the exam.

My only criticism of the book is that it needs to be brought up-to-date with respect to the new J2EE technologies that have emerged since it was published in 2002. Also, I personally would like to see more practice questions, or ideally, a practice exam included on a CD.

I've been developing Java enterprise web applications for about five years, and I found this book to be exactly what I needed to get a 93 on Part 1 of the SCEA exam. The book was useful in filling in my knowledge gaps of some of my lesser used J2EE features as well as more general architectural concepts.

The book is extremely helpful for Part 2 of the exam. I have read posts in several web forums that Part 2 of the exam requires 40 - 100 hours of work. However, I have a good background in UML and the standard Java web application flow, and with the help of this book I completed Part 2 in less than 20 hours and received a score of 88. Without this book I can only assume that some people are going into far too much detail actually low-level designing a solution application, whereas the book clearly illustrates what successful diagrams should look like and the expected level of detail.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone seeking SCEA certification.

I took the exam today and passed with 75%. All I read is only this book and the total time I took for the preparation is one day (believe me, just one day). I do have 7 years of experience in Java technologies.

This book refreshes the concepts we already know and surprisingly I remember at least 5 - 7 questions asked in the exam are available in this book (exactly same question).

This book is good both for beginers of J2EE to get a basic understanding of the scope and for advanced architect to review anything missing before going to exam.

Unlike most Java books, its handy and easy to carry for reading along the way to work.

It is very concise and to the point. If you have couple of years of experience in J2EE and read this book, you can easily get certified.

This exam prep book can be regarded as definitive, coming as it does from Sun, which issues the J2EE exam. But going quickly through this book suggests that the exam is not that difficult. If you already know this field, then you might not need the book.

It also poses the question as to why the exam is not harder? Sun has to walk between two limits. If the exam is too hard, few will pass it, and so there will be fewer ultimately to independently promote J2EE. But if it is too easy, the certificate becomes devalued. So this book shows how Sun is trying to average out these extremes.

My biggest complain about this book is the shallowness of the content.

This book is more like an introductory course to SCEA exam, not a study guide. The reason being, each chapter addresses very basic elements of J2EE technology and no attempt has been made to go in detail about any technology.

If you want to be a serious architect, better read books with in depth knowledge on each SCEA exam chapters.

I was surprised whe received this book, its a little book with excellent information for the exam and the General IT life!!!

Jam packed with information, but not a lot of elaboration for people new to the material.

This book is very well written and works well as a review book for the Architect exam. It doesn't really contain enough to cover the whole exam but it is a very good start. Some exam objectives are missing and others are just skimmed over. If this book contained double the material it would be excellent. It is much better written then the Paul Allen book.

Writing a certification guide poses some serious challenges to the author. Having co-authored a guide my self, I understand how tricky it is to decide how much to cover. A test like SCEA that covers such a broad ground makes the job even tougher.

The first ever SCEA guide met most of my expectations. It is concise, covers most of the exam objectives and most importantly, maintains the focus on the test without digressing over to J2EE trivia. Every chapter attempts to cover a set of objectives, and has a review section followed by some sample test questions. The accompanying answers provide explanation of correct, incorrect and not-so correct choices. The book also introduces a case study that introduces the reader to skills essential for solving part-II assignment.

I said the book covers "most" of the objectives. That's where it falls short of expectations. Any study guide should, at the least, cover all the test objectives. Some test objectives such as Legacy connectivity and Messaging have been totally left out which made me question the seal of approval from SunEducation! It is one thing not to cover an objective in detail, but totally dropping a couple of them is inexcusable. A good reader can easily point out some spottiness too - such as not including the state diagram for entity beans along with that of session beans.

In summary, they badly need to fill some gaping holes, and to the extent possible, work towards completeness.

[...]

You can get through this book in a few days, but the material here is not enough to pass the exam.
You would definitely want to read the GoF Design patterns book, along with a good book on EJB.

Reading all the other reviews I just HAVE to warn everybody else about a big problem with this book: it's full of mistakes. Not just simple ones, but some fundamental ones as well. ONLY read this book to get an idea of what the exam will tell you, but get the real information somewhere else. The "review questions" were even worse. Many were more an exercise in your understanding of the english language than a question on the subject, especially those of chapter 2. But the most unforgivable mistake is a question where the answer starts with "We can assume that...". Pardon me? Anybody who calls himself an experienced architect knows Rule One: NEVER make assumptions. Making assumptions is the single most effective way of screwing up a project. To make a long story short, just read the index. That should help enough, and will at least not hurt you either.

This book is definitely not intended for those who want to learn J2EE or the design patterns. However, it is an essential guide for those with a background in systems design and architecture who want to get certified. It is concise and covers most of the required material.

Not everybody rates this book very highly (and so do I with 3 starts) I might as well take a different road. Granted the book is not a great one but I strongly recommend your buying if you want to have a quick understanding on what is all about J2EE architect exam.

Well this book is not written for a new programmer, or someone with little knowledge of JSP and Servlets. It requires a solid experience on J2EE to understand the book content and samples. You will not guaranteed to pass the exam only by reading this book,

I was tempted to only give the book three stars, but it does accomplish what it sets out to do, which is to prepare you for the 48-question enterprise architect exam. The exam was somewhat easier than I expected, so I've moderated my initial opinion that the book was too simple--now it's the exam that I think is too simple, and the book is just right for the exam. Reading this book, just like taking the exam or gaining certification, won't make you an architect nor even prove that you already are one.

Note however that this book was published in March 2002, so it is already somewhat dated. However, as of June 2003 the SCEA exam still focuses on J2EE 1.2 (and EJB 1.1), so for now the book is still relevant to the exam. By the end of 2003 there should be a new version of the exam, and then the book will be out of date. (BTW, if you take the J2EE 1.2 version of the exam, beware not to answer any questions based on J2EE 1.3 or 1.4--for instance, there were no message-driven beans in EJB 1.1.)

One area the book completely misses, but which figures prominently in the exam, is the subject of interfacing with legacy systems. Fortunately for me I had plenty of experience interfacing with legacy systems already when I took the exam or I would have felt a little blind-sided by the lack of coverage for it in the book. (Hmmm...not sure if `fortunately' is quite the right word to describe my experience with legacy systems.) Other than this omission, if you feel comfortable with the subjects in the book then reading this book (which won't take too long) should be enough preparation for the exam. Hopefully most of this will be review of stuff you already know with a few new pieces of information scattered throughout. I mean, you only need to get 33 out of 48 questions correct to pass, so it's not exactly rocket science.

This book is just an expansion on the objectives posted on the sun website. This is a helpful guide as to what topics to focus on to prepare for the certification. This guide by itself is not at all sufficient to get certified as java architect. BTW, certification by itself is not sufficient to be a Java Architect. One needs real life experience and 'a lot of scars on the back' to be an architect. I have seen a lot of so called 'architects' who are very good at pulling wool over managements eyes and BSing developers.

Writing a certification guide poses some serious challenges to the author. Having co-authored a guide my self, I understand how tricky it is to decide how much to cover. It is not unusual to attract criticism from both sides of the aisle - too much detail or too little detail. A test like SCEA that covers such a broad ground makes the job even tougher.

The first ever SCEA guide met most of my expectations. It is concise, covers most of the exam objectives and most importantly, maintains the focus on the test without digressing over to J2EE trivia. Every chapter attempts to cover a set of objectives, and has a review section followed by some sample test questions. The accompanying answers not only explain why an answer is the correct answer, but goes a step further to elaborate why other answers are not correct, or not-so correct. The book also introduces a case study that introduces the reader to skills essential for solving the part II assignment.

I said the book covers "most" of the objectives. That's where it falls short of expectations. Any study guide should, at the least, cover all the test objectives. Some test objectives such as Legacy connectivity and Messaging have been totally left out which made me question the seal of approval from Sun Education! It is one thing not to cover an objective in detail, but totally dropping a couple of them is inexcusable. The editorial bragging "..in-depth coverage of every exam objective.." is simply a prevarication when the guide itself totally drops a few objectives. A good reader can easily point out some spottiness too - such as not including the state diagram for entity beans along with that of stateful and stateless session beans.

In summary, this guide will help you prepare for the test but you will need to supplement it with other study resources and notes. They badly need to fill some gaping holes, and to the extent possible, work towards completeness.

this guide really has nothing interesting better than this are the notes published by few certified people on javaranch.

I carry around far too many books in business travel, so I appreciate the short ones: Fowler's UML Distilled comes to mind, as does Clark's Designing Storage Area Networks, Brooks's The Mythical Man Month, and Bloch's Effective Java.

Cade and Roberts have reduced their guide's content to the essential elements for test preparation; I appreciate that good work. Plenty of books try to boot-strap the reader into their topic in the name of reaching a broader audience. Trust me, you'll appreciate this effort less as the overlap in your book collection grows. You'll appreciate it even less still when you have to box them all up for a move.

If you've been working with web designs for a few years and have used a practical, higher-level language to describe new systems to other people, and you've been through J2EE systems a few times, you're probably ready to certify. All you need is some focus and an idea what to expect to build your confidence; this little study guide, complemented perhaps by studying with other test candidates, will take you the rest of the way.

This book doesn't cover all the chapters.But the topics like security,design patterns,protocols,common architectures are very concise and clear.But you have to depend upon other materials for the other topics.

Hi,
Why I give 3 stars is this book is not enough for the whole exam as they have missed legacy connectivity(this is really a vague topic and you really need help in this topic),messaging etc.I don't know whether the material for ejb is enough.But the material for security,Internationalization,protocols,design patterns,common architecture really tells what you should focus on. That is really good.For those chapters you really need this so that you don't have to break your head searching for material.Whatever material that is covered in this book is very concise.A real study guide you can say.But if they have covered all the topics I would have given 5 stars

This is a good book if you are serious on becoming an Architect. This book shows the right direction and clarifies the expectations of the Architect exam. If you are experienced with Java/J2EE technology and distributed computing, then this book is sufficient to clear the exam. I am an experienced J2EE professional and I got 81% by studying only this book. This book helped me to know the expectations of the exam objectives. I recommend this book, if you got over 3 years of experience with Java/J2EE technologies.

I didn't find in this study guide, what I've expected (based on my experience with other study guides): (1)Precise explanations of the basic concepts, (2) Quizlets to test the important and hard to understand concepts, (3) Providing solid answers for the quizlets including the Why's and the Why Not's, (4)Concrete discussions of at least a few intricacies in each topic, (5)A thorough set of multiple choice questions at the end of each chapter, (6) A thorough explanation of the right and the wrong answers, (7)A Test Simulator CD, etc. The coverage of the topics and the multiple choice questions is "very sketchy."

Not only it's one of the best overviews of Java Archtitecture issues I've ever seen, it's the only you need to pass the first part of the architecture exam. I read the whole book in less than 2 hours the morning before the exam which was enough to get 100% on the majority of the test sections. It's a real art to write succinct, brilliant tech books, and this one definitely succeeds at it. And the design pattern section is absolutely superb, up-to-date, relevant, intuitive examples!

I'll try not to repeat what others have said because they have been pretty accurate. This is not a "Training Manual" for the test but is instead a "Study Guide". It helps you focus on what you need to bone up on before the test but you'll need to get detailed information elsewhere.

For example, the design patterns section gives a very brief description of each pattern. If you are new to the GoF patterns you need to study another book, but if you are familiar with them and need just a quick review you'll get it here.

I've only got 2-3 years of Java experience but have 12 years of industry experience. I found most of the test questions to be easy but still only got 87% overall.

I gave it four stars because it is the only book out there, it didn't waste my time by being filled with fluff, and it helped me identify my weak areas.

I have just passed the first part with the score of 95%... The book was very helpful.

I strongly recomend it.

Of course, you will also need to read something else to get a good score.

This book is not too bad for preparing the SCEA.

However, there are some typos and errors:

Typos:
1) Page 14, section 2.3, "the standalone programs than (? that) runs inside the Application Client container". And "The following APIs are required for the Application Client container: J2SE, JMS, JNDI, RMI-11OP (?IIOP), and JDBC. This container is provided by the application server vendors"

Errors:
2) Page 36, Collaboration? It is not standard UML.
3) Page 37, Active class? It is not standard UML.
4) Realization page 41, diagram is wrong!
5) P49, activity diagram is wrong. The activities between fork and join are not right. Activity4 can only go to activity6 via join.

The author should consult some UML books, or the UML 1.4 document from ...

This book makes an assumption that the reader is already well prepared for the exam and all that needs to do be done is to summarize key points that might be useful in the exam. The book however lacks discussion on Messaging that is a considerable chunk of the exam.

I found this book almost PERFECT for my needs. Short, concise, and focused on the exam. The sample questions were also very reflective of the exam. If you pass the sample questions, you are probably ready for the exam. With what you learn from the sample questions, content as well as question style, you should actually do a bit better on the exam. That was my experience- about 75% on the book questions, 87% (42/48) on the exam, with no extra study after my initial reading.

And considering the purpose of architect certification is to certify someone with 5+ years experience and deep understanding of design and architectural issues, then a more detailed book would be a thick painful experience. Also, a more detailed book would commit the authors to exposing more of the exam content, and devalue it as a fair measure of an architect. The fact that it requires a wide professional background with some core reading is excellent. If you struggle with the exam, enjoy the honest feedback! You have more reading to do, and experience to gain.

With sufficient experience in Java, UML, design patterns, security, general IT and web knowledge, and basic architectural principles, the book more than suffices. Basic EJB knowledge is sufficient since the book doesn't expect a programmer's knowledge of APIs and such.

If you are new to architecture, my recommendations are similar to another reviewers:
UML Distilled, Martin Fowler
Design Patterns, Gamma et al
Mastering Enterprise Java Beans, Roman, Amber, Jewell
EJB Design Patterns, Floyd Marinescu

And if you don't know enough about design patterns and UML to pass those chapters before even reading the chapters, you may be taking the exam a bit prematurely.

I will agree with one statement- the book lacks chapters on some of the objectives. But, considering that they might be considered fair prerequisites for someone qualified to take the exam, I'm not complaining. Though, in looking over my exam results, most of my wrong answers were from the sections without corresponding chapters...common architectures, legacy connectivity, messaging :(. I think my proclivity for screen-scraping did me in.

All-in-all, a masterful book and exam.

This book summarizes things that you must find out from years of experience and from a host of other books. Some people would expect this book to teach them everything, but the architect test is too broad for one book to ever do justice to.

I would buy the Design Patters book (Gamma), the Professional EJB book & Java Server Programming J2EE Edition (Wrox), UML Distilled (Fowler), the Designing Enterprise Applications with the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (Sun). Then I would write some i18n apps, write some simple beans on JBoss, disect the Java Blueprint sample app, then READ THIS STUDY GUIDE, and THEN I would take the test.

But then what do I know, I missed 3 questions on the test. If you're lazy and want to pass the test from reading one and only one book, you're SOL, it ain't gonna happen.

I guess the book is better than nothing but Mark Cade should
be embarrased about this attempt at a study guide. It is incomplete for the exam objectives it has and is totally missing
information on several of the objectives.
The only reason to get it is that he is an assesorof the SCEA
and thus the questions that exist in the book (meager though they are will probally help in getting a feel for the exam questions). ...

There are no information on 3 exam objectives: Common architectures, Legacy connectivity, and Messaging. That is why I give the book 2 stars. This book is ONLY useful as a study guide, and as such it must be complete.

The objectives that are covered, are covered in a very short and consise way, which is fine for a study guide, but is not enough if you really want to learn the topic.

...you *absolutely* need to read a lot more in order to score well in the exam. The exam questions are trickier than what you'll find in this book.

I agree with the previous reviewer completely - it's just a list of topics you need to cover to prepare for the exam. You could have just printed out the table of content from this book and start reading other books on each of the topics with the same success.

I disagree with what some readers feel about the book. This book is just what a study guide should be. Concise and focused on the objectives of the exam. I read the book, took the exam and passed. I had very little time to study and this book, being so concise, definitely helped.

If it had taken 1000 pages to help me prepare for a 48 questions exam, then I would think that the author merely just did a 'cut and paste' from EJB specs and a few other books. Instead, this author bothered to extract the essence of the information required for SCEA and presented it to the reader.

Most of the sections - Security, I18n, Protocols, EJB, and Design Pattern are well written in an easy to understand and concise manner.

Having said all that, I wonder why some objectives are missing. Common Architecture, Legacy Connectivity and Messaging are left out completely. Also, the UML section could have covered a few more notations.

Still a good book for SCEA candidates but take note, it says "Study Guide" not "Idiot's Guide". So don't expect the book to teach you how to write the "Hello World" Bean.

If you are experienced in J2EE, this book is just right for you, otherwise, you have to read a dozen different books for all those topic covered by SCEA certification. If you are not experienced in J2EE, this book is still good summary of what you will or have learned from other books.

SCEA certification should not be challenging to those who have good knowledge of J2EE.