This repo is a structured study guide for the AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam (DVA-C02). The angle is practical: IAM and credentials, serverless and containers, data stores, messaging, APIs, CI/CD, and observability—the stuff you wire up in real projects.
Disclaimer: AWS updates services and exam content over time. Always confirm the official exam guide (PDF) and AWS documentation before the exam.
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Read Exam blueprint & study plan for domains, timing, and a realistic prep schedule. |
| 2 | Work through the docs in order, or jump to weak areas. |
| 3 | Run and adapt the code examples in examples/. Hands-on beats skimming. |
| 4 | Drill exam-style reasoning: choose the best AWS-managed solution for constraints (cost, ops, security, latency). |
| Topic | Guide |
|---|---|
| Exam structure, domains, study tactics | 01 – Exam blueprint & study plan |
| IAM, credentials, SDK configuration | 02 – Identity, access & SDK fundamentals |
| Lambda, API Gateway, containers on AWS | 03 – Compute & serverless for developers |
| S3, DynamoDB, caching, file workflows | 04 – Storage & application data |
| SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Step Functions | 05 – Integration, messaging & orchestration |
| CI/CD, IaC, deployment strategies | 06 – Deployment, CI/CD & release engineering |
| Encryption, secrets, Cognito, compliance patterns | 07 – Security for developers |
| CloudWatch, X-Ray, troubleshooting | 08 – Observability, performance & troubleshooting |
You should be comfortable designing and implementing applications that:
- Use IAM roles (not long-lived keys on servers), least privilege, and temporary credentials (STS).
- Build serverless flows with Lambda, API Gateway, and event-driven wiring (SQS, SNS, EventBridge).
- Persist and query data with DynamoDB (keys, GSIs, streams, transactions) and S3 (storage classes, policies, presigned URLs).
- Integrate asynchronous work (queues, fan-out, idempotency) and orchestration (Step Functions) where appropriate.
- Ship code with CodePipeline / CodeBuild / CodeDeploy and repeatable Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, CDK, SAM).
- Operate with CloudWatch metrics and logs, and trace requests with X-Ray when debugging.
See examples/README.md for:
- boto3 patterns (retries, pagination, DynamoDB, S3 presigning).
- AWS SAM / CloudFormation snippets.
- Lambda handler shapes and environment configuration.
- AWS Certified Developer – Associate
- Exam guide (PDF)
- AWS Documentation
- AWS Well-Architected Framework
- Create a free-tier–friendly project: API Gateway → Lambda → DynamoDB table; add SQS for async processing.
- Add X-Ray tracing and CloudWatch log groups with structured JSON logs.
- Put the app in CodePipeline with a buildspec / SAM template and deploy to a dev stage.
Work through the guides, run the examples, and keep the official exam guide open. That combination is enough to walk into the Developer Associate exam without guessing what they will ask about.