SOA is Dead? No, it is more alive than ever before…

In 2009, Anne Thomas Mannes blog „SOA is Dead; Long Live Services“ got a lot of attention. Reading the blog made clear, that Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) is not dead, of course. SOA is no more a hype. Instead of that, SOA is reality and essential for future success of large, long-living IT projects. SOA products are mature and stable instead of early alpha releases. Over the years, many design patterns and best practices were established to make a SOA introduction successful.

… so you should do a SOA Certification! But which one?

SOA Certified Professional (SOACP) is a vendor-neutral SOA certification of soaschool.com, which is founded by the well-known author Thomas Erl. His SOA books are the defacto standard within the SOA environment and approved by huge firms with good reputation such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, Red Hat, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Other SOA certifications exist besides SOACP, e.g. from IBM. I always prefer vendor-neutral certifications. Nevertheless, if you are used to work with IBM products all the time, such a certification may also be a good idea.

ZapThink also offers a vendor neutral SOA certification. That website also compares its certification to SOACP from soaschool. You should look at this interesting comparison!

Nevertheless, I prefered doing the certification of soaschool, which contains the information of the defacto standard SOA books instead of ZapThink’s content (which I have never heard before).

Unfortunately, no first-hand reports from neutral people are available for both, ZapThink and SOACP. Thus, I hope this article will help you gather information about SOACP. And I also hope, that someone will write a first-hand report about the ZapThink SOA certification.

Different Certifications for different Roles

A large SOA project requires several different roles. Each specific role has ist own tasks. Different certifications require different modules (e.g. SOA Technology Concepts, SOA Design and Architecture or SOA Security) – and therefore exams – to pass. Certifications are available e.g. for SOA Analysts, SOA Consultants, SOA Architects or SOA Developers. See also soacp.com for a good overview.

At least five exams must be passed to get such a certification. Some of the modules are „labs“, i.e. real practice work is required (and I like that).

But you can start with the plain „SOA Certified Professional“ (SOACP) – without a prefix such as Consultant or Developer. This certification requires to pass just two exams (module 1 and an arbitrary second one). The following information experiences are gained from the SOACP…

Contents of Module 1 and 2

I will not describe the content. I just list some important headwords and key messages. As mentioned, the exam concentrates on content of the SOA books of Thomas Erl.

Module 1 (S90.01 – Fundamental SOA & Service-Oriented Computing) contains absolute basic SOA stuff. Nevertheless, this information is very important for everyone working in a SOA project (and actually, many people working in a SOA project do not understand these basics).  In the following, I list some of the facts you learn – and although they should be clear, they are not clear for many people:

• Strategic goals of SOA (e.g. increased Interoperability, increased organizational agility)
• Service and Service Composition
• Service-Orientation Design Principles (e.g. service loose coupling, service reusablity, standardized service contract, service autonomy)
• Service Delivery Lifecycle
• Service Consumer and Service Provider
• Adoption Impacts (e.g. organisational-, infrastructure-, maturity-, migration-, governance-considerations
• SOA is a concept, not a technology or product
• SOA is a strategic, enterprise-centric goal (i.e. long-term)
• Web Service != Service-oriented Architecure
• Web Service != SOAP Web Service
• Top-down vs. Bottom-up introduction of SOA

Conclusion about Module 1:

Focusing on concepts, principles and requirements enables you to view the SOA industry with increased clarity. Governance is often the least understood and least planned aspect of SOA. Absence of a governance plan (and budget) can jeopardize the success of SOA initiatives.

Module 2 (S90.02 – SOA Technology Concepts) contains technical basics (i.e. really basics, just absolute beginner stuff for each technology), e.g.:

• Service Roles (Consumer, Provider, Intermediary, Initial Sender, Ultimate Receiver)
• SOAP Web Service vs. REST Web Service vs. Proprietary Components
• XML, XML Schema, Namespaces
• SOAP, WSDL and UDDI
• WS-* such as WS-Addressing and WS-Policy
• Web Service Contracts
• Web Service Messaging
• Message Exchange Patterns (MEP)
• Orchestration
• Distributed Transactions
• Enterprise Service Bus

Conclusion about Module 2:

A good overview about technology concepts is given. But be aware, that it really is an overview. No deep details about XML, WSDL or other technologies (but further module will teach you many details).

Preparation Material

A Self-Study Kit is available for every module. It costs 400 USD and contains:

• A booklet with all content for the exam
• A second booklet with a summary, questions and exercises
• At least two Audio CDs (spoken by Thomas Erl, each about 60 minutes), explaining the content and giving some hints for the exam
• Flash Cards with questions and answers on the back
• An exam voucher (for one free attempt; expires after twelve months) => An additional attempt costs about 150 USD

The fifth module is free, so you can do a certification with five modules for 1600 USD using the self-study kits.

Additionally, workshops are available all over the world. Price is about as much as workshops from other IT coaching companies.

Of course, you can also do the certification without self-study kits and without workshops, especially if you have deep SOA knowledge already. But for most people at least the self-study kits are necessary.

Learning Style

I used the following methodic while preparing and I recommend you doing the same:

1.     Read the booklet at least two times (until you really understand everything) – but do not read the sample exam questions at the end of the booklet!

2.     Listen to Audio CD 1 (content of the booklet, same order of chapters as in booklet)

3.     Read the booklet again

4.     Listen to Audio CD 2 (content of the booklet, plus some hints for the exam, random order of chapters)

5.     Read the booklet again

6.     Try the flash cards

7.     Try the sample exam questions of booklet one (do not read these before this point!)

8.     If you think you are ready, take the exam. Otherwise do more preparations (e.g. read some of the chapters of the SOA books => they explain every fact very detailed). Then try the exam.

How to pass the Exam(s)?

Of course, you do a certification to learn something. But you also want to pass the exam. So, here some information:

• The exam questions are fair
• You need about 80% to pass a exam (about 40 of 50 questions) => Each exam differs a little bit
• Questions are: True or False; 1 of X; N of X
• Time is one hour (more than enough!)
• Real knowledge is checked, no unfair pitfalls (as e.g. in the SCJP exam for Java SE)
• If you have some experiences with SOA and XML, you should be able to pass the exam without reading any of the SOA books (probably you already did this earlier in your project). If you are an newbie to XML and SOA, you will have to study the contents in the SOA books. Otherwise, it will be tough to pass the exam
• I am not allowed to post information about the content of the questions, so please do not ask me!
• You have to do the exam at a Prometric Test Center. I described my experiences with Prometric in my SCJP blog. Be sure to read this if you have never done a Prometric exam yet.

I passed module 2 with 98%, but module 1 with just 82% (80% required), because I had problems with some questions. I cannot tell you if I misunderstood these questions (I am no native english speaker). But sometimes, some „strange“ words or sentences confused me. Thus, contrary to module 2, I was not sure about some answers. I have heard from other people passing module 1 with 95+ %, so probably I had just a bad day.

Criticism

My only criticism is the preparation booklet. It simply consists of the slides which are used in the workshops. Thus, you got a DIN A4 paper, but just half of it contains the slide. The slide is intended for a presentation on a beamer. Some graphics are very difficult to read. To be fair, most slides are just text, and there are also many good readable graphics.

After each chapter, there is a slide which says „do an exercise now“. First you do not understand, what you should do now, because the next slide is is the first page of the next chapter. Is this exercise just for the workshop? No, all exercises are at the end of the booklet!

Nevertheless: If you pay 400 USD for two booklets and some CDs, you should expect some kind of a real booklet, not just Powerpoint slides. BWT: I know some other certifications of other vendors using the same style. That is very bad practice, in my opinion.

Besides this criticism, everything else is fine with the exam and I am convinced that every SOA guy should do it!

Conclusion about SOACP

You have to understand SOA if you want to introduce or apply SOA. This certification is a great, vendor-neutral opportunity to learn what SOA is – conceptually and technically.

The final slide of module 1 is a great summary:

„An SOA initiative does not need to be enterprise-wide to provide benefit, nor does it require the creation of a global data model. Most SOA benefits and ROI [Return on Investment] are long-term investment and impact is up-front. The more up-front effort you put into each service, the less of a governance burden the service becomes. Focusing on concepts, principles and requirements enables you to view the SOA industry with increased clarity.“

Many SOA projects failed in the past, because people are not familiar with SOA and its concepts – e.g. still many people think that you can build a SOA just by using SOAP Web Services instead of proprietary components. So, if you are new so SOA, you should do this certification to learn SOA concepts. If you already have experience with SOA, you should do this certification (with much less effort than a SOA newbie) to get a confirmation about your SOA knowledge.

How to continue after SOACP?

As mentioned, the SOACP just contains basic knowledge of SOA. This is very important, and everybody involved in a SOA project should have this knowlegde.

Nevertheless, you should continue with other modules to become a SOA Certified Architect (or whatever you want to become). Besides, a Cloud Certification is already available.

So, what is your opinion about the SOACP and other SOA certifications? Or maybe you also have some experiences with these certifications and want to share them with us?

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post First-hand Report about the Certification „SOA Certified Professional“ (SOACP) of soaschool.com appeared first on Kai Waehner.

Which one should I do?

What IT certification should I do next? This is what I wondered within the last weeks, after I passed the SCJP 6 successfully some months ago. I surfed the internet a lot to find information about possible IT certifications.

Sun / Oracle JEE Certifications

These certifications are interesting, you can choose between EJB, GUI (JSP and Servlet), SCEA for Architects and some more. But there is a huge problem in my opinion: There is no good possiblity to self study for these exams. Only a few books exists. They have many errors and are also not up-to-date L So a JEE certification does not make any sense in my opinion – let’s wait for Oracle to update them and wait for proper self study possibilities.

Besides a Sun JEE certification, I only found the SOA certifications of soaschool as thinkable, good alternative.

„soaschool.com“ (SOACP) Certifications

Look at the website: www.soaschool.com! It looks interesting: Many modules, and you can choose the topic where you want to become a certified expert in. But I did also find many questions and no answers.

–       What ist the detailed content of each module?

–       Are the self study kits good? (they are very expensive!)

–       Does this certification bring any benefit? Do you learn something, or do you make it just to own the certification. (several other IT certifications exists, which do not make any sense at all, in my opinion)

„First-Hand“ Information (talking to Thomas Erl)

I was at the SOA Symposium 2010 in Berlin, Germany: http://www.soasymposium.com/. You can read my report about this IT conference  here: http://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2010/10/06/soa-cloud-symposium-2010-in-berlin/

„soaschool.com“ was also present. They offer several SOA certifications. soaschool is founded by Thomas Erl, a well-know SOA expert. He also initiated the SOA Manifesto: http://www.soa-manifesto.org/

Thomas Erl wrote several books about SOA which I like a lot and already used in real world projects. For example, his SOA Design Patterns are considered as defacto standard. Also his explanations about XML Schema, Namespaces and WSDL are very good and easy to understand.

I seized on the opportunity and talked with Thomas Erl about the soaschool SOA certifications. I also investigated some of the self study kits about one hour.

There is also an interview with Thomas Erl available where he talks about these certifications: http://www.informit.com/podcasts/episode.aspx?e=a428fb21-a185-4065-8038-df635263721f

Conclusion: Yes, do the „soaschool“-Certification – I will, too!

The certifications of soaschool are very good, I will do it in the next months – here are the reasons for my decision:

–       Very good self study kits including the slides of the workshops, a book, a questionnaire and an Audio-Learning-CD

–       Worldwide (optional) workshops available (also personally, I prefer self studying)

–       You can decide what you wanna do: SOA consultant, analyst, architect, Java or .NET developer, security expert, cloud expert! Simply choose your relevant modules

–       Really practical contents (overlapping a lot with the SOA books of Thomas Erl). For example: As developer or architect, you have to do Module 2 and 5, which primarily test your XML and WSDL knowlegde.

–       Based on defacto SOA standards (e.g. the SOA Design Patterns of Thomas Erl’s book are present worldwide)

–       You do not only pass the exam to pass it and get the certification (as it is with many other IT certifications) BUT you really learn a lot of stuff which you can apply in your next SOA and cloud projects…

–       Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) certifications (as alternative) have several deficits at the moment, as I already stated above

So, I will start preparing for Module 1 and 2 to be a SOA Certified Professional soon! Then I will think about which further Modules to take. Are you convinced to take the soaschool exams, too? Or did you choose another certification? If so, tell me your reasons, please…

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post SOA / Cloud Certification of „soaschool.com“ (SOACP) by Thomas Erl or Sun / Oracle Java Enterprise (JEE) Certification? appeared first on Kai Waehner.

Yesterday I passed the test for “Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP 6)” with 83 percent. Here are my experiences about doing the certification and the hints I can give you.

What should you keep in mind before starting your preparation for the exam?

– The preparation is a lot more time-consuming than I thought, also for experienced java developers.

– You really improve your programming skills a lot (As many other people, I doubted this fact when I started learning for the exam and looking at these tricky, non-practical code snippets).

– You should do the preparation and test in English language – almost no good non-English resources are available. At least, I can speak for the German language.

– Do not care about the score. Personally, I also do not care  – I just wanted to pass the exam. But I was prepared very well and some wrong answers happened only because some questions are not clear in my opinion. E.g. the questions about encapsulation, coupling, inheritance and cohesion are not clear – sometimes several answer look correct to me.

My (bad) experiences with the “Prometric Test Center”:

– There are plenty of test centers worldwide. You can choose the date and time very flexible, it is no problem to book only one day before an exam.

– There is no quality assurance for the registered test centers. “My” test center was awkward: A lot of noise, a defect lamp, a very bad display. Next time, I will choose another one. If you can, ask some colleagues for their experiences in your area.

– The time (3 hours for 60 questions) started when you had to read the license where you have to confirm with yes. So I think nobody reads the license because it has many pages…

– I had no technical problems with drag and drop questions (as I have read from some other guys).

– I registered directly at Prometric (http://www.prometric.com/) for the test. I did NOT get an invoice with my company’s name! So there are huge problems to get the money back from my company, because they need an invoice with their company’s address on it.

I contacted Prometric, and I got the following answer: “Please be informed that Prometric does not send out invoices in a company name. The file is in the candidate name and therefore the receipt is always addressed to the candidate.”

Which resources should you use to prepare for the exam?

In my opinion, the following three resources are sufficient (and also there is no good alternative):

– The book “SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 6 Study Guide” (Author: Kathy Sierra): This book explains every important fact for the exam. It also contains some realistic Q&A and two full mock exams.

– SCJP forum at www.coderanch.com: I got an answer to each question within twelve hours. Great!

– ExamLab (http://examlab.tk): Some (very tough) mock exams, for free. I think you need to do some of these because the ones included by the above book do not contain all pitfalls. Beware: These mock questions are very tough! If you can reach 50 percent here, you will probably pass the real exam.
I propose every Java developer to do the exam,  but if you have time to prepare only after work or at the weekend, plan at least six months for it.

If you have any comments about my experiences, let me know…

Best regards,
Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post How to pass the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP 6) appeared first on Kai Waehner.