I did not have time to write recently, because I am busy preparing for the Sun Certified Business Component Developer exam. I am taking it in a little over two weeks, so this period of my blogging inactivity hopefully won't last long.
I chose the "EJB 3 in Action" as my main textbook and read EJB Core and Persistence specifications thoroughly. The last two are important to me as they operate with the language I expect to encounter at the exam. I find it not so uncommon for big vendors to use their sole own bits of terminology (for example in the web services realm).
I am also using Sun Java EE Tutorial as a refresher and contributing to JavaBlackBelt EJB 3 exams. I also find it convenient to choose NetBeans and Glassfish v2 as my playground to test some boundary cases I conceive. Generally, I am an Eclipse guy and many things in NetBeans (especially its editor) are counter-intuitive to me, but its "Verify" option is very helpful in the preparation. It basically checks whether the EJB project fulfills specification restrictions (in fact, some proper subset of them). Using reference application server saves me from checking every little doubt in the documentation, since I admit to believe in such empirical knowledge gathering. Nevertheless, I've already found some things that should be signaled by an exception, but were graciously unsaid by the server.
All in all, I've enjoyed the preparation to this exam a way better than to the SCJP one so far and hope to say the same after taking it.
