The AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam is a popular certification program offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for individuals who want to demonstrate their proficiency in designing, deploying, and managing AWS applications. As the demand for cloud computing continues to grow, the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam has become an essential qualification for developers and cloud professionals. The AWS Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C01) exam is for developers with experience of one or more years in creating and supporting AWS-based applications. However, this exam assesses your knowledge for:
- Firstly, demonstrating knowledge of core AWS services uses, and basic AWS architecture best practices
- Secondly, utilizing AWS for demonstrating skill in designing, deploying, and troubleshooting cloud-based applications
However, many candidates may wonder how challenging the exam is and what they can expect from the certification process. In this blog, we will explore the difficulty level of the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam and provide tips and resources to help you prepare for the exam and succeed in your certification journey.
Glossary for AWS Developer Associate Terminology
Here is a glossary of common AWS Developer Associate terminology:
- AWS (Amazon Web Services): a cloud computing platform offered by Amazon that provides a range of services, including storage, computing power, and database management.
- EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): a web service that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud. EC2 instances can be launched in multiple regions and availability zones.
- S3 (Simple Storage Service): an object storage service that allows customers to store and retrieve files from anywhere on the web.
- VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): a private network that is logically isolated from other virtual networks in the AWS Cloud.
- IAM (Identity and Access Management): a web service that allows AWS customers to manage user access to AWS resources.
- API (Application Programming Interface): a set of protocols and tools for building software applications that specify how software components should interact.
- ELB (Elastic Load Balancer): a service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple EC2 instances in multiple availability zones.
- RDS (Relational Database Service): a web service that provides an easy way to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
- AWS Lambda: a serverless computing service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages the computing resources required.
- CloudFormation: a service that allows users to create and manage AWS resources using a JSON or YAML template.
- DynamoDB: a NoSQL database service that provides high performance at any scale.
- CloudTrail: a service that provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or AWS service in the AWS Management Console or through other AWS services.
- SNS (Simple Notification Service): a service that allows users to send and receive notifications from AWS services or custom applications.
- SQS (Simple Queue Service): a service that allows users to send and receive messages between distributed software components.
- CloudWatch: a service that provides monitoring and management for AWS resources and applications, including logs, metrics, and alarms.
Exam preparation resources for AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam
Here are the official AWS Exam preparation resources for the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam:
- AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam Guide: This guide provides detailed information about the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam, including its format, content, and structure. It also includes tips and strategies for exam preparation.
Link: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-developer-associate/
- AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam Readiness Training: This is a free, self-paced digital training course designed to help you prepare for the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam. It covers key concepts, best practices, and exam strategies.
Link: https://www.aws.training/Details/eLearning?id=19185
- AWS Certified Developer Associate Practice Exam: This is a practice exam designed to help you assess your readiness for the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam. It includes multiple-choice questions that simulate the format and content of the actual exam.
Link: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-developer-associate/practice-exam/
- AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam Blueprint: This blueprint provides a detailed outline of the topics covered in the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam. It includes information about the knowledge and skills required for the exam, as well as sample exam questions.
- AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam Study Group: This is an online forum where you can connect with other AWS Certified Developer Associate candidates and share study resources, exam tips, and other helpful information.
Exam Format
The AWS Developer Associate exam is an intermediate-level exam that will have 65 questions of type multiple choice and multiple responses. There will be a time limit of 130 minutes for completing the exam. The exam cost is 150 USD and is available in English, French (France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, and Spanish (Latin America) language.
Is AWS Developer Associate exam difficult?
This exam is for developers who wish to improve their knowledge of databases, containers, and full-stack development. However, this exam effectively puts your knowledge to the test in terms of web app authentication, and computing, such as running applications on virtual servers, running serverless applications, caching for scaling and performance, and different forms of storage. This examination is for you if you want to take your career as a developer to the next level. Furthermore, it is recommended to have the following knowledge and understanding before taking this exam:
- Firstly, knowledge of at least one high-level programming language
- Secondly, understanding of:
- core AWS services uses of the services
- basic AWS architecture best practices
- AWS Shared Responsibility Model
- application lifecycle management
- using of containers in the development process
- Then, skills for developing, deploying, and debugging cloud-based applications using AWS and writing code for serverless applications
- Lastly, ability to:
- identify key features of AWS services
- use the AWS service APIs, AWS CLI, and SDKs for writing applications
- apply a basic understanding of cloud-native applications for writing code
But, how to achieve all these skills? For this, in the next section, we will cover the preparation guide for AWS Developer Associate Exam.
AWS Developer Associate step by step Study Guide
For having better preparation for AWS Developer Associate Exam, there are a few areas and resources that you need to create a good focus on. Starting with the exam guide.
1. Get familiar with the exam guide
The AWS Exam Guide covers a wide range of subjects that are both relevant and topical. Each part must be read in order to have a better understanding of the subject. Make a list of the topics that you wish to explore. Begin with the most difficult topics and, once you’ve mastered them, you’ll be able to establish your learning speed for the other areas. The following are the topics:
AWS Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C02) updated course outline.
Domain 1: Development with AWS Services
Task statement 1: Develop code for applications hosted on AWS.
Knowledge of:
- Architectural patterns (for example, event-driven, microservices, monolithic, choreography,
orchestration, fanout) (AWS Documentation: What is an Event-Driven Architecture?) - Idempotency (AWS Documentation: Ensuring idempotency)
- Differences between stateful and stateless concepts (AWS Documentation: Stateful or Stateless)
- Differences between tightly coupled and loosely coupled components (AWS Documentation: Loosely Coupled Scenarios, Tightly Coupled Scenarios)
- Fault-tolerant design patterns (for example, retries with exponential backoff and jitter, deadletter queues) (AWS Documentation: Building well-architected serverless applications, Timeouts, retries, and backoff with jitter)
- Differences between synchronous and asynchronous patterns (AWS Documentation: Synchronous and Asynchronous Express Workflows)
Skills in:
- Creating fault-tolerant and resilient applications in a programming language (for example, Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go) (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Lambda?, Resilience in AWS Lambda)
- Creating, extending, and maintaining APIs (for example, response/request transformations, enforcing validation rules, overriding status codes) (AWS Documentation: Use a mapping template to override an API’s request, Amazon API Gateway concepts)
- Writing and running unit tests in development environments (for example, using AWS Serverless Application Model [AWS SAM]) (AWS Documentation: Build and Test a Serverless Application, Getting started with AWS SAM)
- Writing code to use messaging services (AWS Documentation: Creating an example messaging application)
- Writing code that interacts with AWS services by using APIs and AWS SDKs
- Handling data streaming by using AWS services
Task Statement 2: Develop code for AWS Lambda.
Knowledge of:
- Event source mapping (AWS Documentation: Lambda event source mappings)
- Stateless applications
- Unit testing
- Event-driven architecture (AWS Documentation: What is an Event-Driven Architecture?)
- Scalability
- The access of private resources in VPCs from Lambda code (AWS Documentation: Configuring a Lambda function to access resources in a VPC)
Skills in:
- Configuring Lambda functions by defining environment variables and parameters (for example, memory, concurrency, timeout, runtime, handler, layers, extensions, triggers, destinations) (AWS Documentation: Configuring Lambda function options, Using AWS Lambda environment variables, Configuring AWS Lambda functions)
- Handling the event lifecycle and errors by using code (for example, Lambda Destinations, dead-letter queues) (AWS Documentation: Amazon SQS dead-letter queues, Using Lambda with Amazon SQS)
- Writing and running test code by using AWS services and tools (AWS Documentation: Developer Tools)
- Integrating Lambda functions with AWS services (AWS Documentation: Using AWS Lambda with other services)
- Tuning Lambda functions for optimal performance (AWS Documentation: Profiling functions with AWS Lambda Power Tuning)
Task Statement 3: Use data stores in application development.
Knowledge of:
- Relational and non-relational databases (AWS Documentation: What is NoSQL?, Relational (SQL) or NoSQL)
- Create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations (AWS Documentation: Performing Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations)
- High-cardinality partition keys for balanced partition access
- Cloud storage options (for example, file, object, databases) (AWS Documentation: Storage)
- Database consistency models (for example, strongly consistent, eventually consistent) (AWS Documentation: Read consistency, Consistency Model)
- Differences between query and scan operations (AWS Documentation: Best practices for querying and scanning data)
- Amazon DynamoDB keys and indexing
- Caching strategies (for example, write-through, read-through, lazy loading, TTL) (AWS Documentation: Caching strategies)
- Amazon S3 tiers and lifecycle management (AWS Documentation: Managing your storage lifecycle)
- Differences between ephemeral and persistent data storage patterns (AWS Documentation: Comparing your on-premises storage patterns with AWS Storage services)
Skills in:
- Serializing and deserializing data to provide persistence to a data store
- Using, managing, and maintaining data stores
- Managing data lifecycles
- Using data caching services
Domain 2: Security
Task Statement 1: Implement authentication and/or authorization for applications and AWS services.
Knowledge of:
- Identity federation (for example, Security Assertion Markup Language [SAML], OpenID Connect [OIDC], Amazon Cognito) (AWS Documentation: SAML identity providers (identity pools))
- Bearer tokens (for example, JSON Web Token [JWT], OAuth, AWS Security Token Service [AWS STS]) (AWS Documentation: Using bearer tokens)
- The comparison of user pools and identity pools in Amazon Cognito (AWS Documentation: What is Amazon Cognito?)
- Resource-based policies, service policies, and principal policies (AWS Documentation: Identity-based policies and resource-based policies, How IAM roles differ from resource-based policies)
- Role-based access control (RBAC) (AWS Documentation: Role-based access control)
- Application authorization that uses ACLs (AWS Documentation: Access control list (ACL) overview)
- The principle of least privilege (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM)
- Differences between AWS managed policies and customer-managed policies (AWS Documentation: Managed policies and inline policies)
- Identity and access management (IAM) (AWS Documentation: What is IAM?)
Skills in:
- Using an identity provider to implement federated access (for example, Amazon Cognito, AWS Identity and Access Management [IAM])
- Securing applications by using bearer tokens
- Configuring programmatic access to AWS
- Making authenticated calls to AWS services
- Assuming an IAM role
- Defining permissions for principals
Task Statement 2: Implement encryption by using AWS services.
Knowledge of:
- Encryption at rest and in transit (AWS Documentation: Encrypting Data-at-Rest and -in-Transit)
- Certificate management (for example, AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority) (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Private CA?, Requesting a private PKI certificate)
- Key protection (for example, key rotation) (AWS Documentation: Rotating AWS KMS keys)
- Differences between client-side encryption and server-side encryption (AWS Documentation: Client-side and server-side encryption)
- Differences between AWS managed and customer-managed AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) keys (AWS Documentation: AWS KMS concepts, Basic concepts)
Skills in:
- Using encryption keys to encrypt or decrypt data
- Generating certificates and SSH keys for development purposes
- Using encryption across account boundaries
- Enabling and disabling key rotation
Task Statement 3: Manage sensitive data in application code.
Knowledge of:
- Data classification (for example, personally identifiable information [PII], protected health information [PHI]) (AWS Documentation: Personally identifiable information (PII))
- Environment variables (AWS Documentation: Environment variables to configure the AWS CLI)
- Secrets management (for example, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store) (AWS Documentation: Referencing AWS Secrets Manager secrets from Parameter Store parameters, AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store)
- Secure credential handling (AWS Documentation: AWS security credentials)
Skills in:
- Encrypting environment variables that contain sensitive data
- Using secret management services to secure sensitive data
- Sanitizing sensitive data
Domain 3: Deployment
Task Statement 1: Prepare application artifacts to be deployed to AWS.
Knowledge of:
- Ways to access application configuration data (for example, AWS AppConfig, Secrets Manager, Parameter Store) (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store)
- Lambda deployment packaging, layers, and configuration options (AWS Documentation: Lambda deployment packages, Creating and sharing Lambda layers)
- Git-based version control tools (for example, Git, AWS CodeCommit) (AWS Documentation: What is AWS CodeCommit?, Getting started with Git and AWS CodeCommit)
- Container images
Skills in:
- Managing the dependencies of the code module (for example, environment variables, configuration files, container images) within the package
- Organizing files and a directory structure for application deployment
- Using code repositories in deployment environments
- Applying application requirements for resources (for example, memory, cores)
Task Statement 2: Test applications in development environments.
Knowledge of:
- Features in AWS services that perform application deployment (AWS Documentation: AWS Deployment Services, Overview of Deployment Options on AWS)
- Integration testing that uses mock endpoints (AWS Documentation: Set up mock integrations in API Gateway)
- Lambda versions and aliases (AWS Documentation: Lambda function aliases)
Skills in:
- Testing deployed code by using AWS services and tools
- Performing mock integration for APIs and resolving integration dependencies
- Testing applications by using development endpoints (for example, configuring stages in Amazon API Gateway)
- Deploying application stack updates to existing environments (for example, deploying an AWS SAM template to a different staging environment)
Task Statement 3: Automate deployment testing.
Knowledge of:
- API Gateway stages (AWS Documentation: Setting up a stage using the API Gateway console)
- Branches and actions in the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflow (AWS Documentation: CI/CD on AWS)
- Automated software testing (for example, unit testing, mock testing) (AWS Documentation: Integrating with automated tests)
Skills in:
- Creating application test events (for example, JSON payloads for testing Lambda, API Gateway, AWS SAM resources)
- Deploying API resources to various environments
- Creating application environments that use approved versions for integration testing (for example, Lambda aliases, container image tags, AWS Amplify branches, AWS Copilot environments)
- Implementing and deploying infrastructure as code (IaC) templates (for example, AWS SAM templates, AWS CloudFormation templates)
- Managing environments in individual AWS services (for example, differentiating between development, test, and production in API Gateway)
Task Statement 4: Deploy code by using AWS CI/CD services.
Knowledge of:
- Git-based version control tools (for example, Git, AWS CodeCommit) (AWS Documentation: What is AWS CodeCommit?, Getting started with Git and AWS CodeCommit)
- Manual and automated approvals in AWS CodePipeline (AWS Documentation: Manage approval actions in CodePipeline)
- Access application configurations from AWS AppConfig and Secrets Manager (AWS Documentation: AWS AppConfig integration with AWS Secrets Manager)
- CI/CD workflows that use AWS services (AWS Documentation: CI/CD on AWS)
- Application deployment that uses AWS services and tools (for example, CloudFormation, AWS Cloud Development Kit [AWS CDK], AWS SAM, AWS CodeArtifact, Copilot, Amplify, Lambda)
- Lambda deployment packaging options (AWS Documentation: Lambda deployment packages)
- API Gateway stages and custom domains (AWS Documentation: Setting up custom domain names for REST APIs)
- Deployment strategies (for example, canary, blue/green, rolling) (AWS Documentation: Rolling Deployments)
Skills in:
- Updating existing IaC templates (for example, AWS SAM templates, CloudFormation templates)
- Managing application environments by using AWS services
- Deploying an application version by using deployment strategies
- Committing code to a repository to invoke build, test, and deployment actions
- Using orchestrated workflows to deploy code to different environments
- Performing application rollbacks by using existing deployment strategies
- Using labels and branches for version and release management
- Using existing runtime configurations to create dynamic deployments (for example, using staging variables from API Gateway in Lambda functions)
Domain 4: Troubleshooting and Optimization
Task Statement 1: Assist in a root cause analysis.
Knowledge of:
- Logging and monitoring systems (AWS Documentation: Designing and implementing logging and monitoring)
- Languages for log queries (for example, Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights) (AWS Documentation: CloudWatch Logs Insights query syntax, Analyzing log data with CloudWatch Logs Insights)
- Data visualizations (AWS Documentation: Data visualization)
- Code analysis tools
- Common HTTP error codes (AWS Documentation: Supported status codes for custom response, Common Errors)
- Common exceptions generated by SDKs (AWS Documentation: Exception handling for the AWS SDK for Java 2.x)
- Service maps in AWS X-Ray (AWS Documentation: Using the service map)
Skills in:
- Debugging code to identify defects
- Interpreting application metrics, logs, and traces
- Querying logs to find relevant data
- Implementing custom metrics (for example, CloudWatch embedded metric format [EMF])
- Reviewing application health by using dashboards and insights
- Troubleshooting deployment failures by using service output logs
Task Statement 2: Instrument code for observability.
Knowledge of:
- Distributed tracing (AWS Documentation: AWS X-Ray, What is AWS X-Ray?)
- Differences between logging, monitoring, and observability (AWS Documentation: Monitoring and observability)
- Structured logging (AWS Documentation: Centralized and structured logging)
- Application metrics (for example, custom, embedded, built-in) (AWS Documentation: Publishing custom metrics)
Skills in:
- Implementing an effective logging strategy to record application behavior and state
- Implementing code that emits custom metrics
- Adding annotations for tracing services
- Implementing notification alerts for specific actions (for example, notifications about quota
limits or deployment completions) - Implementing tracing by using AWS services and tools
Task Statement 3: Optimize applications by using AWS services and features.
Knowledge of:
- Caching
- Concurrency (AWS Documentation: Configuring reserved concurrency)
- Messaging services (for example, Amazon Simple Queue Service [Amazon SQS], Amazon Simple Notification Service [Amazon SNS]) (AWS Documentation: Fanout to Amazon SQS queues, Sending Amazon SNS messages to an Amazon SQS queue in a different account, What is Amazon Simple Queue Service?)
Skills in:
- Profiling application performance
- Determining minimum memory and compute power for an application
- Using subscription filter policies to optimize messaging
- Caching content based on request headers
2. Understanding the concepts using AWS exam readiness
This course will teach you how to study for the exam by looking at the exam’s topic areas, connecting them to AWS development, and finding particular areas to focus on. You’ll go over example exam questions in each topic area and learn how to analyze the topics being assessed so you can avoid making mistakes.
Intended Audience
This course is for:
- Developers preparing to take the AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam
Course Objectives
This course teaches you the process of:
- Understanding the exam structure and question types
- Identifying questions that relate to AWS development concepts
- Using an exam question to interpret the ideas being tested
3. Using the AWS Developer training
• AWS Technical Essentials
AWS Technical Essentials walks you through the most important AWS services and solutions. The essential AWS principles of computation, database, storage, networking, monitoring, and security are covered in this course. Through hands-on training experiences, you will begin working in AWS. Further, this covers the principles you’ll need to improve your understanding of AWS services so you can make well-informed decisions about solutions that match your needs. And, you’ll also learn the process of creating, comparing, and applying highly available, fault-tolerant, scalable, and cost-effective cloud systems throughout the course.
• Introduction to AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a technology that allows you to rapidly deploy your apps in the cloud. The different components of the AWS Elastic Beanstalk solution will be briefly discussed in this course, and the service will be demonstrated.
• Introduction to Containers
This is an introductory course for those who have little to no prior experience with containers. It will educate you about the history and ideas of containerization, as well as provide you with an overview of the various technologies used in the container ecosystem and the role of containers in microservice designs.
• Introduction to Serverless Development
This course will introduce you to the fundamentals of serverless computing so that you can begin designing serverless apps. Moreover, you’ll learn how to apply server-based development best practices to serverless development, as well as how to modify your development procedures for serverless application development.
• Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) Primer
This course focuses more on the Amazon Elastic Container Service, going beyond the fundamentals of containerization and its benefits (ECS). However, you’ll learn how to use Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) to deploy containers on AWS, as well as other AWS services like the Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR). Further, you’ll also learn about some of the most frequent microservices use cases.
• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) Primer
This course covers the fundamentals of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). You’ll learn how to set up containers on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using EKS and other services. Further, you’ll also learn about how EKS handles communications and management.
• Getting Started with DevOps on AWS
This course is designed for technical learners in the development and operations domains who want to understand the fundamentals of DevOps on AWS. You will learn about the culture, methods, and technologies utilized in a DevOps environment through talks, interactive material, and demonstrations. And, you’ll also learn about AWS techniques for designing and deploying secure apps at a rapid rate.
Further, at the end of the course, you will be able to define how AWS assists teams in implementing DevOps methods. And. these best practices are centered on creating and delivering apps more securely while reducing time-to-market and controlling risk.
• Developing on AWS
This course will teach you how to create safe and scalable cloud apps using the AWS SDK. Here, you can understand the process of using code to interface with AWS and go through essential ideas, best practices, and troubleshooting techniques. Further, you will learn about:
- AWS SDK and developer credentials configuration for Java, C#/.NET, and Python
- Secondly, using the AWS SDK for interacting with AWS services and developing solutions
- Then, service authentication using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Lastly, using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon DynamoDB as data stores
4. Gain hands on experience in AWS Services using whitepapers
Using the AWS whitepapers relevant for the Developer Associate exam, you will learn about AWS services and best practices using:
- AWS Well-Architected Framework
- Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery on AWS
- Microservices on AWS
- Serverless Architectures with AWS Lambda
- Optimizing Enterprise Economics with Serverless Architectures
- Running Containerized Microservices on AWS
- Blue/Green Deployments on AWS
5. Assess yourself with the Practice tests
Practice examinations can help you figure out how long it will take you to answer each question and how well you understand each topic. Furthermore, the practice tests can help you focus on single-domain subjects, which is a good starting point for having strong preparation. However, to strengthen your revision abilities, start taking full-length practice exams after you’ve grasped the domain. Start taking an AWS Developer Associate practice test to learn more about your strong and weak areas.
Things to remember:
- You can cancel or reschedule your exam free of charge up to 24 hours before your planned appointment.
- Secondly, this exam is offered through online proctoring, so you don’t have to go to a testing facility near you to take it.
- Lastly, this exam will take 130 minutes to complete. You don’t have to rush because you have a lot of time. So, take your time and double-check your answers.
Final Words
In the coming years, the cloud industry will grow rapidly. If you want to improve your job stability or earn higher pay, passing the AWS Developer Associate exam is the best way to do so. As a result, in order to improve your preparation, you must concentrate on all of the essential areas. Create a study plan, understand test patterns utilizing the information supplied above, and pass the exam for a step-by-step preparation.
