It’s a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.
— Mark Twain, “Curing a Cold”
This book is for Java programmers and students who know basic Java and want to prepare for the SCBCD exam, CX-310-090. Since the book has a laser-sharp focus on the exam objectives, expert EJB developers who want to pass the exam can use this book to ensure that they do not overlook any objective. Yet, it is not just an exam-cram book. The chapters and the sections within each chapter are presented in a logical learning sequence: every new chapter builds upon knowledge acquired in previous chapters, and there is no hopping from topic to topic. The concepts and topics, both simple and complex, are explained in a concise yet comprehensive fashion. This facilitates stepwise learning and prevents confusion-and makes this book also useful for beginners who want to get up to speed quickly, even if they are new to EJB technology. You will find yourself returning to this book as a handy reference even after you have taken and passed the exam.
This book has five parts:
| Part | Topic | Chapters |
| 1 | Enterprise JavaBeans | 1 through 2 |
| 2 | Session beans | 3 through 5 |
| 3 | Entity beans | 6 through 10 |
| 4 | Message-driven beans | 11 |
| 5 | EJB services | 12 through 14 |
With the exception of chapter 1 on J2EE, each chapter begins with a list of those exam objectives on which the chapter focuses. We follow the order of the objectives as published by Sun for the most part, but we do deviate from the published sequence in a few places in order to keep the topics and the subject matter in line with sequential learning and to avoid hopping from topic to topic.
The first section in each chapter is the Introduction, in which we establish the concepts or topics that will be explored in the chapter. As you read through a chapter, you will find Notes to emphasize important concepts or information and Alerts to point out information that may be contrary to your expectations depending on your level of experience with the technology. Both Notes and Alerts are important from the point of view of the exam. The Summary section of each chapter provides the big picture and reviews the important concepts in the chapter.
The Exam’s-Eye View section highlights the important points in the chapter from the perspective of the exam: the information that you must comprehend, the things that you should watch out for because they might not seem to fit in with the ordinary order of things, and the facts that you should memorize for the exam.
Each chapter ends with review questions. This section has a two-fold purpose: to help you test your knowledge about the material presented in the chapter and to help you evaluate your ability to answer the exam questions based on the exam objectives covered in the chapter. The answers to the review questions are presented in appendix D.
This book and the exam are based on the EJB 2.0 specification, which you can download from the Sun web site http://www.sun.com/documentation
Some of the conventions used in this book are described below:
When a method name ends with (?), it means the method has one or more arguments.When a method name ends with (), it means the method may or may not have one or more arguments.When a method name does not end with (), it means we are referring to any method that belongs to a group of methods starting with this name; for example, a create method could becreate(),create(?),createDiscount(), and so on.
Source code for the programming example in appendix A is available for download from the publisher’s web site at http://www.manning.com/sanghera.
You will also be able to download the abridged version of Whizlabs SCBCD Exam Simulator with practice exam questions from the same web site. More information on the exam simulator is available on page xxvii.
Purchase of the SCBCD Exam Study Kit includes free access to Author Online, a private web forum run by Manning Publications, where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the author and from your fellow users. To subscribe to the forum, point your browser to http://www.manning.com/sanghera. This page gives you the necessary information on how to access the forum once you are registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct on the forum.
Manning’s commitment to our readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialogue among individual readers and between the readers and the authors can take place. It is not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the authors, whose contribution to the AO is voluntary and unpaid.
The AO forum and the archives of the previous discussions will be accessible from the publisher’s web site as long as the book is in print.
You can also reach the author through his web site at http://www.paulsanghera.com or via email at paul_s_sanghera@yahoo.com.
Dr. Paul Sanghera is an educator, technologist, and entrepreneur living in Silicon Valley, California. An expert in Java technologies and TCP/IP networking, Paul has ten years’ programming and substantial teaching experience in Java. He has taught Java and other technologies at San Jose State University, Brooks College, CSU Hayward, and Golden Gate University. Having contributed to the development of technologies such as Netscape Browser and Novell’s NDS, he has earned several industry certifications, including Sun Certified Business Component Developer, Sun Certified Java Programmer, CompTIA Project+, CompTIA Network+, and CompTIA Linux+. As a senior software engineer and an engineering manager, Paul has been at the ground floor of several successful startups such as WebOrder and mp3.com. With a master’s degree in computer science from Cornell University and a PhD in physics from Carleton University, he has authored and co-authored more than 100 technical papers published in well-reputed European and American research journals. He has also presented talks by invitation at several international scientific conferences.