Allan Lykke Christensen » Career

Christmas present from Sun

Allan Lykke Christensen — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:50:00 +0000

Just as the year was ended I got a great Christmas present from Sun Microsystems.

1) A cool NetBeans 10 year anniversary T-shirt for participating in the community acceptance test programme for NetBeans 6.5 (NetCAT)

2) A pass on my exam to become Sun Certified Specialist for NetBeans IDE

The exam was special to me as it was my first ever certification exam. My score was 82%, with the least score in questions about building Java SE applications. I guess it shows that I’ve never build Java SE applications on NetBeans. Otherwise I think the exam was great. Studying for the exam revealed a lot of useful features that I had never used before, but now wondering how I could ever live without. I can highly recommend doing the exam!

Thanks Sun!

Yearly conference at the local Danish IT Society branch

Allan Lykke Christensen — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:41:00 +0000

Last week I went to the yearly conference for my local Danish IT Society branch. The topic of the conference was Enterprise Architecture. I was a bit unsure about attending as I was expecting some obscure high-level talks that has never seen the light of day. I was pleasantly surprised! All the speakers did a great job and managed to cover the various facets (from theory, to best practice, to practice) of Enterprise Architecture. What especially caught my attention was the excellent governance and organisational re-structuring implemented at NyKredit headed by their CIO (and president of Danish IT Society) Lars Mathiesen (You can read articles about Mathiesen on Computerworld.dk). From a vendor point-of-view the Vice President SOA Strategy, Ivo Totev of Software AG flew in from Germany. Last year I went for another meeting arranged by Danish IT Society with Scrum founder Jeff Sutherland. I wasn’t too impressed as there was too much “going-around-the-bush” and not a clear business case for Scrum. Anyways, I didn’t know what to expect from Ivo Totev’s presesentation. However, I was very impressed with his presentation about the best practices of Enterprise Architecture coupled with anecdotes about what was working and not working with their clients. If you’ve got interest in Enterprise Architecture, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), and Business Process Management, I suggest visiting Software AG’s customer community at http://communities.softwareag.com/ where you’ll interesting resources such as podcasts, blogs, discussion groups and even a freely downloadable PDF version of the book “BPM Basics for Dummies”.

Ordered the certification books

Allan Lykke Christensen — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:17:00 +0000

I’ve finally ordered the certification books that I mentioned in a previous post (SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055): Study Guide Exam 310-055 and Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java EE Study Guide (Exam 310-051): Study Guide Exam 310-051).

It is my personal goal to have taken both certifications before the end of April. I was tempted to also get the Certification Press book about Sun Certified Business Components Developer, but it got such bad reviews on Amazon that I didn’t dare to get it. Unfortunately it seem to be the only study guide for Business Components Development.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to the books getting here so that I can get started!

Considering Java certification

Allan Lykke Christensen — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:35:00 +0000

As one of my new year resolutions I promised myself that I’d get some sort of technical certification this year. Basically what I’m interested in is the Java Programmer Certification, Web Component Developer Certification and Enterprise Architect Certification. For the three certifications I’ve found the following prep literature:

SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055): Study Guide Exam 310-055 (Certification Press) – Link

Sun Certified Web Component Developer Study Guide (Exam 310-081) – Link

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for Java EE Study Guide (Exam 310-051): Study Guide Exam 310-051 (Certification Press) – Link

On the project management side I’m considering the Scrum Master Certification or Prince 2 Certification.

Any recommendation?