May 9, 2010

How to become an Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert

I just took and passed the Oracle SOA Foundations, Adoption and Implementation exam (1Z0-114). The exam is actually acquired from BEA, and is a combination of both the BEA SOA Foundations and BEA SOA Adoption and Implementation exams. Passing the exam grants you an OCE (Oracle Certified Expert) as an Oracle SOA Architect.


Certification Details
    Certification:              Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert (OCE)
    Exam:                       Oracle SOA Foundations, Adoption and Implementation
    Time:                        120 minutes
    Cost:                         $195
    Passing score:            66%
    Number of questions:  78 

Study Material
    BEA White Paper Domain Model For SOA

Preparation Time
You will need 20 hours (or more, depending on your current knowledge).

Sample Questions
    BEA SOA Adoption & Implementation Mock Exam
    Oracle SOA Foundations, Adoption and Implementation Sample Questions 
    Sample questions for IBM SOA Test 664/665
    IBM SOA Fundamentals (000-664 Exam) 

Degree of Difficulty
Oracle certification exams are not usually easy, but this provides recognition and credibility to the certification.

Based on the scale below, if you have extensive architecture, design, and implementation experience in SOA and related technologies, the exam is slightly above average in difficulty (straight black line). If you are a SOA developer with little architecting experience, the exam may be on the difficult end (dotted black line).
Around a third of the exam focuses on explicit technical questions (e.g., a Service Directory provides the ability to discover existing services). The second third involves concepts surrounding the BEA Domain Model (see Study Material). The last third focuses on story-board scenarios, and asks questions in areas such as canonical design, SOA benefits, cost justifications, architectural decisions, process approaches, roadmap prioritization, SOA adoption challenges, and more. 

Preparing for the Exam

1. Read the study material and know it by heart.
 
2. You should understand and know how to explain each of the following:
  • BPEL, service composition, orchestration, composite applications, service reuse.
  • ESB, VETO, transformation, routing.
  • Fine-grained vs. coarse-grained services.
  • XA protocol, compensating transactions, idempotent operations.
  • Calling/exchange paradigms: asynchronous, synchronous, callback, polling, fan-out, callout, uni-directional, bi-directional, fork/join.
  • Terminology: Web services, portlets, WSDL, XML, UDDI, WSRP, JSR, AJAX, HTTP, SSL, SOAP, EDA, JMS, SAML, SLA, canonicals, adapters.
  • WS-* specifications: WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Policy, WS-Coordination, WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Addressing.
  • Products: Service Registry, Service Bus, Policy Directory, BAM, Web Services Manager. 
3. Go through the BEA SOA Adoption & Implementation Mock Exam and Oracle SOA Foundations, Adoption and Implementation Sample Questions.

4. Leverage your SOA architecture and implementation experience. 

Oracle Links 
For more information about the certification and the exam, check out:
    http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=284
    http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=41&p_exam_id=1Z0_114

My Opinions
The exam assumes architecture level experience within the SOA space. 

For example, what role does BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) play in your enterprise? What is the best way to push data to BAM? How does this, if at all, impact your main operational process? Unless you have architected the usage of and/or implemented BAM, you may not know. If you can answer these questions, then you should be able to answer one of the BAM related questions in the exam.

Being a perfectionist, I noticed a few grammatical errors in the exam, missing periods, double quotes not closed, etc., but nothing that would impact your understanding of the question.

Final thoughts:
  • Follow what I mentioned in "Preparing for the Exam". This will give you what you need to cover 75% of the exam.
  • Questions are not technical in nature. For example, you will not find questions that ask "What is the request security token structure in WS-Trust?" You will most likely encounter questions such as "Company X currently has services on a legacy system and want to migrate them off. What should they do?"
  • Go through the mock exams.
  • Know the BEA White Paper Domain Model For SOA by heart. If you would like the summary and study notes I made from this white paper, then contact me and I'll be happy to share it.
  • The IBM mock exams I listed above have a few questions that are similar to those that appear in the exam, so going through them will probably firm up your concepts. 
Good luck!

34 comments:

  1. Great man , I am planning to give this exam. Could you please let me know, if you refered any other material inorder to pass this exam.
    ReplyDelete
  2. The 3 things you really need are: the single PDF (BEA Domain Model), sample questions, and your experience. This is not an exam you can solely pass on reading the whitepaper, so I'll be honest and say that experience does make a difference.

    Also, each and every phrase listed under bullet #2 in 'Preparing for the Exam' appears in the exam at least once, so you must have some familiarity with each of them (you'll find many resources out there, but you won't find a whitepaper that specifically addresses them all for the exam).

    Good luck!
    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Ahmed , I have gone through the domain models white paper, if you have some notes please send it to me , i will appreciate that.

    my email id - rjchamps@gmail.com
    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Ahmed,

    I am planning to take the Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert exam soon and found your blog very useful. I would really appreciate it if you can send me additional notes and study material that you might have.

    My email id is: bbc_threads@yahoo.co.uk

    Regards,
    Alf
    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Ahmed,

    I'm planning to take Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert on 12 August. I would appreciate if you cand send any additional notes that you may have to cp_dragos@yahoo.com

    Regards,

    Catalin.
    ReplyDelete
  6. hi Ahmed,
    Congrats for passing SOA Architect.
    I am planning to take the exam by August 25th. can you please send me the additional notes that you are are having. please send the document to srimtech@yahoo.co.in or srimtechj2ee@gmail.com
    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Ahmed,
    Well done, I am planning on taking this exam next week, can you please send to tom_a_a@yahoo.com your additional notes.
    By the way the link to the BEA mock exam no longer works.
    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Ahmed,
    Passed the Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert exam last week and wanted to thank you for the tips provided by you on the blog as the information was quite useful.

    You were spot on when you mentioned there was no one book or set of material that will make you pass the exam. Most of the times I fell back on my work experience related to web services & SOA implementation, and concepts from IT Service Management to answer the questions. Also, it helped I had previously worked on designing canonical message formats/xml schemas.

    Alf
    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi Ahmed,

    Please sent you additional notes and analysis to tushar.arsekar@gmail.com
    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi Ahmed,
    Thanks a lot for all the details. I am appearing
    for Oracle SOA certification on Wednesday. It will be helpful if you can send me your notes and analysis to ann_malla@yahoo.com.
    Regards,
    Ann
    ReplyDelete
  11. Congrats Ahmed, great score also. Im preparing this exam and aiming before the retire date. This blogpost will help me preparing the exam. If you've got any additional notes and tips please mail me at melvinvdkuijl@gmaildotcom

    Regards,

    Melvin
    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi Ahmed,

    Please send me the additional notes on tushar.arsekar@gmail.com.

    Few days left for the certification to expire.
    Thanks,
    Tushar
    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Ahmed,

    Passed the test today. Thanks for the tips this is probably the best blogpost concerning 1z0-114. There are no vendor specific questions as you said. Hard work and experience will help to pass the test (oracle cource material 800+ pages..).

    -Jani
    ReplyDelete
  14. Hi Ahmed,

    I just pass the certification today, with 98%. Thank you very muh for tips.

    Catalin.
    ReplyDelete
  15. Hi Ahmed,

    Congratulations for passing Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert exam with such a great score :-) I was just browsing googlefor Oracle SOA architect exam and landed up @ your blog and to be honest, I found it to be of great help. I am planning to enroll myself for Oracle SOA Architect exam. Would be really nice of you, if you can pls share your additional notes which you made during your exam preparations. My email id is : jameel.j2ee@gmail.com

    Thanks a lot in advance.
    Jameel
    ReplyDelete
  16. Hi,

    I have just managed to pass the exam. I got 67%.
    This exam is tough in the sense you don't have proper materials to rely on.Previously I appeared IBM SOA exam which was more structued and passed it. Also other exams like Sun Certified Java Programmer,Sun Certified Web Component Developer exam and Sun Certified Enterprise Architect were not so tough to pass, as they were more structured.

    This blog helped to get 50% help.Thanks for your help and support
    Thanks
    Tushar Arsekar
    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi Ahmed,
    I will be sitting for SOA Foundation Practioner Exam (1Z0-451) within next couple of weeks. Was going through your blog..If you could send some links where I could find some sample questions on the exam, would be really helpful and grateful.

    Regards,
    Joyjit
    ReplyDelete
  18. Hello Ahmed,

    Thanks for this great blog,I also will be sitting for SOA Foundation Practioner Exam (1Z0-451)..I would be grateful If you could send some helpful links/info where I could prepare myself, would be really helpful and grateful.
    Kind Regards & Thanks in advance,
    Aiman Salama (aimansalama@hotmail.com)
    ReplyDelete
  19. Hi Ahmed,
    I am preparing for this exam. Your blog is very helpful. Please send me the helpful information, sample questions and tricks to crack this exam. I have arround 6 years of experience in J2EE. Please let me know if Oracle SOA expert or IBM SOA certification is better. I am currently looking to get in Oracle certification since i already have several SUN certification. Email: jha.cse@gmail.com
    Thanks,
    Vivek
    ReplyDelete
  20. Aiman/Vivek,

    Unfortunately, I have not yet taken the SOA Foundation Practioner Exam yet, but I plan on taking it sometime within the next few months.

    Expect a blog post within the next few months on hints and study notes.

    If you plan on taking the exam earlier, best of luck to you.

    ~Ahmed
    ReplyDelete
  21. Hi Ahmed,

    Thanks for the update
    you too best of luck


    cheers,
    Aiman
    ReplyDelete
  22. I'm planning to appear for the exam next month. Can you please share your summary and study notes.

    kiran.func@gmail.com

    Thanks in advance.

    Regards,
    Kiran
    ReplyDelete
  23. hi Ahmed.
    pls share the summary and study notes that you made from domai model white paper..

    thanx for your support
    ReplyDelete
  24. Ahmed ,

    I am planning to take the Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert exam soon and found your blog very useful. I would really appreciate it if you can send me additional notes and study material that you might have.

    My email id is: arunkumar.cts@gmail.com

    Arun
    ReplyDelete
  25. Hi,Ahmed
    I am planning to take the Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert exam this week, i would be very very grateful if you can send me the dditional notes and study material that you might have.

    My emailid is parwez.khan01@gmail.com
    ReplyDelete
  26. Hi Ahmed,I am writing my exam soon, Thanks for this wonderful information, any additional study notes will be appreciatd, my contact is awa_ikechi@yahoo.com
    ReplyDelete
  27. Hi Ahmed, this is a great source of information to get certified Oracle SOA Architect Expert. I am also planning to appear in this exam. I would appreciate if you share any additional study notes. My contact is iffee@hotmail.com
    ReplyDelete
  28. Hello all,

    The Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert Exam (1Z0-114), which is now officially retired, is very different from the new Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Exam (1Z0-451).

    Unfortunately, this blog post does not apply to the new Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Exam (1Z0-451).

    Good luck.
    ReplyDelete
  29. Hi,

    I am planning to go for Oracle SOA Certification
    Can any one help me to get through it..
    And Provide me Dumps for Passing out..
    Please send to my mail id lpvijay.kumar@gmail.com
    ReplyDelete
  30. First of all very Informative Blog on SOA. I am new to SOA & planning to do some SOA certifications. Can anyone guide me in this?
    ReplyDelete
  31. Nicole, check out:

    http://blog.thisisahmed.com/2010/05/how-to-become-oracle-soa-architect.html#comment-form
    ReplyDelete
  32. Hi Ahmed,

    I am planning to take the Oracle SOA Architect Certified Expert exam, i would be very grateful if you can send me the additional notes and study material that you have.

    My mail Id : vidyasagaramirineni@gmail.com

    Thanks,
    Vidya Sagar.
    ReplyDelete
  33. Hi Ahmed,

    I am more interested on learning more about SOA & implementation. I have some previous experience on Web services and xsds. Could you pls guide me some ways to prepare for this exam Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Exam (1Z0-451) as a beginner. Thanks in advance.

    Thanks,
    Praveen S K
    ReplyDelete
  34. Sry , my email id is : skpraveen18@gmail.com

    Thanks,
    Praveen S K
    ReplyDelete

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