How to Prepare for AWS Developer Associate (DVA-C01) Exam in 2022

Adil Shehzad
4 min readOct 15, 2022

AWS Developer Associate Certification is one of the Mid/Associate Level certifications offered by AWS. By Getting Certified, you will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate an understanding of core AWS Services, uses, and basis of AWS architecture best practices.
  2. Demonstrate proficiency in developing, deploying, and debugging cloud-based applications using AWS

Exam Outline 📘

The exam itself is composed of 65 multiple choices, multiple-response questions. The questions are primarily scenario-based, examining your technical reasoning, as well as your memory.

For example: In the Exam, they can test you on how to calculate DynamoDB Provisioned Throughput or which method is used to encrypt more than 4 KB file size in KMS.

Regardless of the training material or practice exams you follow, the divide and conquer rule can help you to clear this exam. Let’s break down the course material, and set a timeframe to study each chapter.

💡 Deployment

  1. Learn about the developer tools i.e., AWS Commit, AWS Codestar, AWS Code Guru, AWS Artifact, AWS Code pipeline, AWS Code Build & AWS Code Deploy.
  2. Learn, in dept, about the AWS Elastic Beanstalk & ELB Deployment types.

💡 Security

Learn Cognito, Identity Access and Management, AWS KMS & CMK services for the Security chapter,

💡 Development with AWS Services

Learn how to write code for Serverless Applications, i.e., AWS Lambda. How to create API Endpoint using API Gateway. DynamoDB for serverless Database, Cloudwatch for monitoring, AWS X-ray for Debugging, S3 Bucket for Storage, SQS, and SNS for utilizing messaging services.

💡 Refactoring

Learn Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon API Gateway cache for the Refactoring chapter.

💡 Monitoring and Troubleshooting

Learn AWS CloudWatch, Cloud Trail, AWS X-Ray, and VPC Flow for Monitoring and Troubleshooting.

While studying these chapters, I highly suggest doing Lab sections, as they will give you hands-on experience on the examined topics and build your photographic memory.

🚀 Checkout the latest AWS Developer Exam Guide

Making Personal Notes 📓

Taking notes is something necessary when studying. My Suggestion is to use Notion, which can help you to create perfect notes, as after passing the exam you can share those notes in your network, also notes can help you to learn faster.

Checkout my latest AWS Developer Notes

Online Courses

Online Courses are the best resources to start your AWS Certification preparation, the key here is to choose the right course that not only covers the exam topics well but also teaches you practical stuff so that you can learn AWS skills that are required in the real world.

You can purchase Stephane's course from Udemy Sale! I would highly suggest that you can wait for the sale.

Stephane Maarek’s AWS Certified Developer Associate Course

This is the best online course to pass the AWS developer associate exam. Created by Stephane Maarek, an AWS expert which has passed all the AWS certifications, this course will teach you everything you need to know to pass this prestigious cloud certification.

👉🏻 https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-developer-associate-dva-c01/

AWS Certified Developer Associate Course by A Cloud Guru

My Second favorite course is from A Cloud Guru, and this course is designed with great labs, which can help you with real hands-on experience with AWS. A Cloud Guru comes with a monthly or yearly subscription, and you can access cloud resources and labs to become a Cloud Guru.

👉🏻 https://acloudguru.com/course/aws-certified-developer-associate

Practice Exams 📝

Practice Exams are the most important part of your preparation, as they can be used to assess your preparation level. You can also use them to find your strength and weakness and work on them before the real exam.

👉🏻 https://tutorialsdojo.com/courses/aws-certified-developer-associate-practice-exams/

AWS White Papers 📝

AWS White Papers has in-depth and practical content that can help you to better understand the AWS Concepts for AWS Developer Exam.

👉🏻 https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-developer-associate/

Some Tips 💁🏽

  • Divide and Conquer — break the learning material down into thematic chapters
  • Use digital notes — match the headings hierarchy with your breakdown of the training material
  • Treat the practice exams as training material — I cannot stress this enough. THIS IS KEY. Also, make sure you don’t memorize the answers, try to understand the explanations
  • Finally, make use of the ‘Mark for Review’ feature of the exam.

Conclusion 🎇

All of these mentioned resources are not free, In case you are looking for Free resources, then check out this Medium Blog, Javin Paul shared some of the great resources which can help you with the AWS Exam. Feel Free to Contribute to my AWS Developer Notes, or you can drop me a message on LinkedIn. Thanks. See you in the next AWS Blog.

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