Rating: 
Summary: It's a light, useful overview, but not complete.
Review: This is the first published book for the SCJEA certification.
Although it's very light (less than 200 pages), it does cover
EJB, UML, Design Patterns, Security, Internationlization, and Protocols. It provides useful information on how to apply your
knowledges on these topics, but you should learn the knowledges
from practice or from other books. It contains some very interesting mock questions, on UML, Security, Internationalization, Protocols, which help you a lot to understand the concept in an architect's way. It provides a case study for part II and part III, although it is a good example, you need to know enterprise java architecting before reading this chapter.I finally decide to give it 4 stars instead of 5 because of two reasons:
1. There is nothing about messaging. legacy connectivity.
2. They copied the nine sample questions from Sun's site, but gave no more explanation. What's more, in the book, the answer of question 5 is incomplete (it should be A, E, but in the book, the answer is E), and the answer of question 9 does not appear in the book (which is D). Since it's the only one available, I suggest you buy (or borrow) this book...
Rating:
Summary: Covers most but not all....
Review: 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. [...]
Rating: 
Summary: A good book, but not a good study guide.
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not enough to pass the exam
Review: 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.
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