Sample assignment for the SCEA exam - part one

Following up on last week's BOF at JavaOne, I promised to put the slides online as well as the expanded version of a sample scenario for part two of the exam. The slides are coming later, and here is the expanded version of the JustBuildIt scenario. As per the talk, the goal here is to expand on this scenario over time and create a fully-worked solution from it. In subsequent posts, I'll be posting the domain model, deliverables and use case diagrams so that you can see the full complexity of a scenario that I believe is of the same complexity as an actual scenario in the architect's exam today.

Enjoy!

You are the architect for JustBuildIt Corporation, an international, vertically-integrated construction company with significant operations in the US and Canada, Europe and the Pacific Rim. JustBuildIt operates its own forests, quarries and steel foundries to supply its own building sites with wood, concrete and steel. This end to end style of operation has helped JustBuildIt to keep its costs of raw material down in an era of soaring commodity prices. The management team has recently concluded a business-wide review from leaves to roots of the entire company and one fact is apparent – JustBuildIt pays a lot of money moving raw materials to construction sites, even when there are materials just as suitable nearby.

JustBuildIt has decided to build a building commodities exchange to allow it and some of its competitors to pool excess capacity in a co-opetition model. In the future, raw materials for a construction site will be sourced through the exchange, rather than exclusively from JustBuildIt inventory.

Based on the management’s report and also interviews with key senior staff, you know the following:

• JustBuildIt have recently invested in an inventory and order management system which tracks capacity of their production facilities and also individual orders coming in from construction sites around the world. This system is accessed via a JMS Queue;

• JustBuildIt have decided to expose the interface to their exchange as a web services API;

• In order to counter accusations of unfairness, JustBuildIt has agreed with all participants that 95% of all transactions to and from the exchange will execute in 5 seconds or less, with the remaining 5% executing in 10 seconds or less;

• The system has an uptime requirement during core working hours (GMT -8 to GMT +8) of 99.99%; and

• The actual placement of orders into the exchange is a manual process – JustBuildIt site foremen place orders daily based on individual construction site requirements.