Sun Microsystems offers many certifications starting from programmer level to architect level. SCEA (Sun Certified Enterprise Architect) certification is designed for enterprise architects responsible for building high scale enterprise applications or who wish to be prospective architects.

The certification exam tests candidate’s architectural knowledge in and out. A Software Architect is the technical boss of software systems and he should act like a software doctor to resolve the issues. A basic difference between a developer and an architect is the way they design the application. Developers may not think about the scalability, maintainability, performance, etc for the long run, but an architect always foresees the application’s future expectations about performance, scalability, etc.

What are the qualifications required to become a J2EE Architect?

I would say he/she should be a Sun Certified J2EE Architect. Because it comprises of all the necessary qualification required for a Technical Architect required for J2EE assignment. I love the way the SCEA Part 2 and Part 3 designed.

The following are the interesting topics that SCEA Exam covers:
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I purposely didn’t write about the Exadel partnership when it was announced as I wanted to get some more details on it.

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ColdFusion 7 appears to be much better at passing null values to a java object.

ColdFusion 6 however likes to block you from doing it, even when you want to.

I am tring to work with a java API that requires me to pass a null value to a method.

Since CFMX 6 has no way of creating a null value I though I would use the Java API to concoct one.

So I did something like this:
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Matt points to an interesting article about using an open business model.

Not sure if the author, Henry Chesbrough mentioned that IBM made significantly more than $100m/yr in revenue as a result of its Linux investments, whether through increased hardware or services sales. And, we continued to drive revenue to AIX. This last point isn’t often covered, but the AIX business didn’t die.

Very few customers take a one-size-fits-all approach to their IT needs. So, yes, you may need AIX or Solaris or a System z for some of your applications. But you’ll also need some RHEL, SLES or Windows for other parts of your infrastructure.

Customers want choice. So when a new option in a given software category becomes available that saves money, time, is easier to use, etc., customers will pay attention. If IBM had tried to ignore Linux, customers would have satisfied their curiosity (initially) and desire for Linux with another vendor. At the same time, these customers wanted to know how Linux fits into their current infrastructure (i.e. technology integration & skills reuse). Having an answer which included AIX and other parts of IBM’s offerings helped. Far from being a hindrance (i.e. related products that needed to be protected at all costs), these related products gave IBM the ability to speak to customer needs for the given project and other projects with different needs.

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The methodology of Enterprise Integration has advanced to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) because of its ability to weave disparate applications and services to produce a business structure where data can flow as a business process.

Environments have been built over time with diverse layers of applications. The development time and maintenance cost to manage these layers is driven down when integration components are built on standards. The most compelling standard in the integration space is Java Business Integration (JBI) which allows for the creation of a Service Oriented Architecture with interchangeable components that are vendor-independent.

Isn’t all development easier with a standard?

Not really. Don’t confuse the ease of using the standardized run-time components with the creation of those run-times. The creation of JBI run-time components is a whole new technology, with layered naming conventions and rules for each binding and service engine components. As with any new technology, JBI brings with it a sizable learning curve.
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