Book excerpt: Definitive, Comprehensive SCEA Exam Prep–Straight from Sun’s Exam Developers! This book delivers complete, focused review for Sun’s new Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA) for Java EE certification exam—straight from two of the exam’s creators! SCEA lead developer/assessor Mark Cade and SCEA lead developer/assessor Humphrey Sheil offer powerful insights, real-world architectural case studies, and challenging sample questions that systematically prepare you for the actual exam. For every question, the authors show why the right answers are right—and why the other answers are wrong. Cade and Sheil cover every SCEA exam topic, skill, and technique, including: Understanding system architecture and its goals Decomposing larger systems into components organized by tiers or layers Addressing requirements for scalability, maintainability, reliability, availability, extensibility, performance, and security Building effective web (presentation) tiers, and analyzing tradeoffs associated with using web frameworks Leveraging EJB 3’s enhancements for business tier development Covering new enhancements in the JEE 5 platform Choosing and architecting the best integration and messaging components for your system Using the Java security model to enforce confidentiality, integrity, authorization, authentication, and non-repudiation Using the most powerful and useful Java EE architecture patterns Documenting Java EE architectures through visual models and narratives The authors also present detailed guidance for handling every element of the SCEA exam—including your development and defense of a complete real-world architectural solution.