Hi,
I have passed EX183. Though I have no experience with Oracle's JEE exam, these two exams are radically different in their approach. Oracle's exam is a test with questions you have to answer correctly in order to become 'certified'. This says nothing about your ability to create or deploy a Java EE program.
Red Hat's 183 has no questions. It has objectives (objectives are on the bottom of the page). So, for example, one of the objectives is "Messaging". Well, when you come to the exam, you may have to implement a project that utilizes the JMS specification in some way (such as using the MessageListener interface mentioned in the objectives, or maybe using the publish/subscribe model). Another objective may take the same program and tell you to implement JPA to connect and save something to a database. These are all examples of course.
In the end, your output is not answers to questions, but a real Java program, which is then compiled, deployed onto an EAP server, and tested against what the objectives of the exam were.
Do note that the EdX course does not cover all the objectives of EX183. I am not aware of a book that would provide EX183 guidance, like we have for RHCSA/RHCE, so if you're not using the Red Hat training, be sure to go through the objectives and finish studying what wasn't covered in the EdX course in other ways.
