I am now a Sun Certified Business Component Developer For Java EE Platform 5 (SCBCD 5.0)

For the last one month or so I kept my eyes on SCBCD 5.0. I actually purchased voucher for that in Feb 2008, when I attended Sun Techdays at Hyderabad. But never got enough time to prepare for it until November. So, in the last fortnight I got handsome amount of time to prepare for the exam.

I have passed SCBCD 5.0 (which tests your knowledge of EJB 3.0 and Java Persistence API - JPA) with a score of 96%. According to my reckoning that is a good score. I got 59 questions out of 61 correct and took nearly 130 mins to complete the exam ( in the allotted 145 min).

I have taken that exam at Prometric centre Caliber Technocrats near Shankar Matam Road, Vizag. I booked for exam yesterday and took it today (18-nov-2008) at 10:30 AM.

There were a few tricky questions and the rest was not very difficult for me as I really prepared well for it. I spent several hours reading books and especially sepcs related to EJB 3.0 and JPA. Sometimes as long as 6 hours at a stretch were spent on the preparation. Overall, good amount of time was spent - around 150 hours.

Here are the resources I have used during my preparation.

Few Few months back I read EJB 3.0 in Action by Debu Panda.
Recently (having seen many people recommending Oreilly EJB 3.0), I have purchased Orielly EJB 3.0 book a month ago and read that. I liked it but, it has so many silly printing mistakes, which really made me unhappy. During exam preparation, you do not want any printing mistake take a mark away from you. But I must confess, overall that is good book.
I read EJB 3.0 Specs (not(not completely because they are too boring) and JPA specs completely.
I read SCBCD 5.0 study guide by Mikalai Zaikin, which is a simplified version of Core and JPA specs. It is good to review everything through that.
When it comes to Mock exams, I used Entuware EJB plus v5. It was good, though I could not agree with a few answers. Overall it is worth taking those mock exams. Mock exams are the ultimate preparation. You should never get to any certification exam without proper exposure to mock exams.
I have used Netbeans IDE 6.1 and Glassfish v2 for practice.

That was about my preparation.

Needless to mention, www.javaranch.com, is the best website for Java certification. For all three - SCJP 5.0, SCWCD 1.4 and SCBCD 5.0 - I have used it.

Of course a good book on SCBCD 5.0, will make the preparation process a little easier. You know the importance of SCJP 5.0 by Kathy during SCJP preparation.

That's all I had to write about my preparation.

I realized, preparing for certification, is the best way to get to the bottom of each topic and get a strong base.

I must admit that each new certification is making me more hungrier for more.

I must thank my wife, Padmaja for her role in my preparation. She just gets me rid of all concerns. A big thanks to kids - Praneeth and Pranav, for letting me concentrate. They missed me and I missed them too. Who can achieve success without sacrifices?

Yeah, now it is time to relax and enjoy the achievement.

Here is my Marksheet for SCBCD 5.0.