Montag, 17. Dezember 2012

Passing OCMJEA Exam Part II & III

I have now passed the Oracle Certified Master Java Enterprise Architect (OCMJEA) exam parts II & III. My score is 129 of 160 - I actually expected to get a better score but I still want share my experiences.

Which assignment did I get?
  • Wireless Phone Company.

Did I change the domain model?
  • Yes. It made no sense to me, so I changed nearly all the cardinalities.
  • I explained in detail why I did this.
  • Please note that my score could have been affected by this (I will never know).

How detailed were my UML diagrams?
  • Definitely a lot more detailed than the ones in the Cade/Sheil book.
  • I also used a lot of notes to explain the diagrams.

Why I did I choose StarUML for designing the UML diagrams?
  • I tried out several free tools from this list at Wikipedia.
  • Some were old and incomplete.
  • Some were complicated to use.
  • StarUML was nice and easy to use. It may not be 100% UML2 compliant but I don't think this is important.

What tool did I choose to design the HTML pages?
  • My HTML editor was Kompozer. It's free and very easy to use.
  • Images exported from StarUML were BMPs. To convert them to PNG I used Paint (yes, the standard Windows program).

How long did I work on my assignment?
  • Many evenings and weekends for several weeks.
  • You should set yourself a reasonable time limit - or you will end up changing your solution again and again (as I did to some extent).
  • I spent quite some searching for sample assignment solutions on the Internet. The ones I found were less than helpful - and you can never know if the guy who posted them actually passed (in most cases I doubt that!).
  • I also spent some time searching for the HTML and UML tools.

How long did I wait for the results?
  • I got an email that I can view my results at the Oracle CertView site about 4 weeks after I submitted the assignment or 3 weeks after I took the part III exam.

Where did I lose points?
  • I will never know. To quote the Exam Score Report: "Details of a passing score are not displayed in order to maintain test security. This score report is the only information you will be provided."
  • It may have been my interpretation of the domain model.
  • It may have been my changes to the domain model.
  • It may have been my choice of integration technologies (where I used web services and JMS).
  • It may have been my deployment diagram with a rather complicated replication solution.

How should you prepare for the part III essay?
The part III essay is really easy. If you take it shortly after you submitted part II you should know good answers to all the questions. A few hints:
  • For each of the non-functional requirements (performance, scalability, availability, ...) think about how your solution handles it and why.
  • Think about alternatives to your proposed solution.
  • Think about patterns used and why.
  • Think about frameworks used and alternatives.
  • Think about changes to the non-functional requirements - What if...

That's all I can do for you. As you may know, I am not allowed to help you with your assignment or to send you my solution - please don't ask for it.

Good luck for your exam!