Introduction
The AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C01) exam is intended for individuals who perform a developer role. The exam validates a candidate’s ability to do the following:
Demonstrate an understanding of core AWS services, uses, and basic AWS architecture best practices
Demonstrate proficiency in developing, deploying, and debugging cloud-based applications by using AWS
Target candidate description
The target candidate should have 1 or more years of hands-on experience developing and maintaining an
AWS-based application.
Recommended general IT knowledge
The target candidate should have the following:
In-depth knowledge of at least one high-level programming language
Understanding of application lifecycle management
The ability to write code for serverless applications
Understanding of the use of containers in the development process
Recommended AWS knowledge
The target candidate should be able to do the following:
Use the AWS service APIs, CLI, and software development kits (SDKs) to write applications
Identify key features of AWS services
Understand the AWS shared responsibility model
Use a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to deploy applications on
AWS
Use and interact with AWS services
Apply basic understanding of cloud-native applications to write code
Write code by using AWS security best practices (for example, use IAM roles instead of secret and access keys in the code)
Author, maintain, and debug code modules on AWS
What is considered out of scope for the target candidate?
The following is a non-exhaustive list of related job tasks that the target candidate is not expected to be able to perform. These items are considered out of scope for the exam:
Design architectures (for example, distributed system, microservices)
Design and implement CI/CD pipelines
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Administer IAM users and groups
Administer Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
Design AWS networking infrastructure (for example, Amazon VPC, AWS Direct Connect)
Understand compliance and licensing
For a detailed list of specific tools and technologies that might be covered on the exam, as well as lists of in-scope and out-of-scope AWS services, refer to the Appendix.
Exam content
Response types
There are two types of questions on the exam:
Multiple choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors)
Multiple response: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more response options
Select one or more responses that best complete the statement or answer the question. Distractors, or incorrect answers, are response options that a candidate with incomplete knowledge or skill might choose.
Distractors are generally plausible responses that match the content area.
Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect; there is no penalty for guessing. The exam includes
50 questions that will affect your score.
Unscored content
The exam includes 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score. AWS collects information about candidate performance on these unscored questions to evaluate these questions for future use as scored questions. These unscored questions are not identified on the exam.
Exam results
The AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C01) exam is a pass or fail exam. The exam is scored against a minimum standard established by AWS professionals who follow certification industry best practices and guidelines.
Your results for the exam are reported as a scaled score of 100–1,000. The minimum passing score is 720.
Your score shows how you performed on the exam as a whole and whether you passed. Scaled scoring models help equate scores across multiple exam forms that might have slightly different difficulty levels.
Your score report could contain a table of classifications of your performance at each section level. This information is intended to provide general feedback about your exam performance. The exam uses a compensatory scoring model, which means that you do not need to achieve a passing score in each section. You need to pass only the overall exam.
Each section of the exam has a specific weighting, so some sections have more questions than other sections have. The table contains general information that highlights your strengths and weaknesses. Use caution when interpreting section-level feedback.
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Content outline
This exam guide includes weightings, test domains, and objectives for the exam. It is not a comprehensive listing of the content on the exam. However, additional context for each of the objectives is available to help guide your preparation for the exam. The following table lists the main content domains and their weightings. The table precedes the complete exam content outline, which includes the additional context.
The percentage in each domain represents only scored content.
Domain % of Exam
Domain 5: Monitoring and Troubleshooting 12%
TOTAL 100%
Domain 1: Deployment
1.1 Deploy written code in AWS using existing CI/CD pipelines, processes, and patterns.
Commit code to a repository and invoke build, test and/or deployment actions
Use labels and branches for version and release management
Use AWS CodePipeline to orchestrate workflows against different environments
Apply AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeStar, and AWS
CodeDeploy for CI/CD purposes
Perform a roll back plan based on application deployment policy
1.2 Deploy applications using AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
Utilize existing supported environments to define a new application stack
Package the application
Introduce a new application version into the Elastic Beanstalk environment
Utilize a deployment policy to deploy an application version (i.e., all at once, rolling, rolling with batch, immutable)
Validate application health using Elastic Beanstalk dashboard
Use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to instrument application logging
1.3 Prepare the application deployment package to be deployed to AWS.
Manage the dependencies of the code module (like environment variables, config files and static image files) within the package
Outline the package/container directory structure and organize files appropriately
Translate application resource requirements to AWS infrastructure parameters (e.g., memory, cores)
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1.4 Deploy serverless applications.
Given a use case, implement and launch an AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) template
Manage environments in individual AWS services (e.g., Differentiate between Development,
Test, and Production in Amazon API Gateway)
Domain 2: Security
2.1 Make authenticated calls to AWS services.
Communicate required policy based on least privileges required by application.
Assume an IAM role to access a service
Use the software development kit (SDK) credential provider on-premises or in the cloud to access AWS services (local credentials vs. instance roles)
2.2 Implement encryption using AWS services.
Encrypt data at rest (client side; server side; envelope encryption) using AWS services
Encrypt data in transit
2.3 Implement application authentication and authorization.
Add user sign-up and sign-in functionality for applications with Amazon Cognito identity or user pools
Use Amazon Cognito-provided credentials to write code that access AWS services.
Use Amazon Cognito sync to synchronize user profiles and data
Use developer-authenticated identities to interact between end user devices, backend authentication, and Amazon Cognito
Domain 3: Development with AWS Services
3.1 Write code for serverless applications.
Compare and contrast server-based vs. serverless model (e.g., micro services, stateless nature of serverless applications, scaling serverless applications, and decoupling layers of serverless applications)
Configure AWS Lambda functions by defining environment variables and parameters (e.g., memory, time out, runtime, handler)
Create an API endpoint using Amazon API Gateway
Create and test appropriate API actions like GET, POST using the API endpoint
Apply Amazon DynamoDB concepts (e.g., tables, items, and attributes)
Compute read/write capacity units for Amazon DynamoDB based on application requirements
Associate an AWS Lambda function with an AWS event source (e.g., Amazon API Gateway,
Amazon CloudWatch event, Amazon S3 events, Amazon Kinesis)
Invoke an AWS Lambda function synchronously and asynchronously
3.2 Translate functional requirements into application design.
Determine real-time vs. batch processing for a given use case
Determine use of synchronous vs. asynchronous for a given use case
Determine use of event vs. schedule/poll for a given use case
Account for tradeoffs for consistency models in an application design
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3.3 Implement application design into application code.
Write code to utilize messaging services (e.g., SQS, SNS)
Use Amazon ElastiCache to create a database cache
Use Amazon DynamoDB to index objects in Amazon S3
Write a stateless AWS Lambda function
Write a web application with stateless web servers (Externalize state)
3.4 Write code that interacts with AWS services by using APIs, SDKs, and AWS CLI.
Choose the appropriate APIs, software development kits (SDKs), and CLI commands for the code components
Write resilient code that deals with failures or exceptions (i.e., retries with exponential back off and jitter)
Domain 4: Refactoring
4.1 Optimize applications to best use AWS services and features.
Implement AWS caching services to optimize performance (e.g., Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon
API Gateway cache)
Apply an Amazon S3 naming scheme for optimal read performance
4.2 Migrate existing application code to run on AWS.
Isolate dependencies
Run the application as one or more stateless processes
Develop in order to enable horizontal scalability
Externalize state
Domain 5: Monitoring and Troubleshooting
5.1 Write code that can be monitored.
Create custom Amazon CloudWatch metrics
Perform logging in a manner available to systems operators
Instrument application source code to enable tracing in AWS X-Ray
5.2 Perform root cause analysis on faults found in testing or production.
Interpret the outputs from the logging mechanism in AWS to identify errors in logs
Check build and testing history in AWS services (e.g., AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, AWS
CodePipeline) to identify issues
Utilize AWS services (e.g., Amazon CloudWatch, VPC Flow Logs, and AWS X-Ray) to locate a specific faulty component
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Appendix
Which key tools, technologies, and concepts might be covered on the exam?
The following is a non-exhaustive list of the tools and technologies that could appear on the exam. This list is subject to change and is provided to help you understand the general scope of services, features, or technologies on the exam. The general tools and technologies in this list appear in no particular order.
AWS services are grouped according to their primary functions. While some of these technologies will likely be covered more than others on the exam, the order and placement of them in this list is no indication of relative weight or importance:
Analytics
Application Integration
Containers
Cost and Capacity Management
Data Movement
Developer Tools
Instances (virtual machines)
Management and Governance
Networking and Content Delivery
Security
Serverless
AWS services and features
Analytics:
Amazon Elasticsearch Service (Amazon ES)
Amazon Kinesis
Application Integration:
Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events)
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
AWS Step Functions
Compute:
Amazon EC2
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Lambda
Containers:
Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR)
Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (Amazon EKS)
Database:
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon RDS
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Developer Tools:
AWS CodeArtifact
AWS CodeBuild
AWS CodeCommit
AWS CodeDeploy
Amazon CodeGuru
AWS CodePipeline
AWS CodeStar
AWS Fault Injection Simulator
AWS X-Ray
Management and Governance:
AWS CloudFormation
Amazon CloudWatch
Networking and Content Delivery:
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon CloudFront
Elastic Load Balancing
Security, Identity, and Compliance:
Amazon Cognito
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
Storage:
Amazon S3
Out-of-scope AWS services and features
The following is a non-exhaustive list of AWS services and features that are not covered on the exam.
These services and features do not represent every AWS offering that is excluded from the exam content.
Services or features that are entirely unrelated to the target job roles for the exam are excluded from this list because they are assumed to be irrelevant.
Out-of-scope AWS services and features include the following:
AWS Application Discovery Service
Amazon AppStream 2.0
Amazon Chime
Amazon Connect
AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
AWS Device Farm
Amazon Elastic Transcoder
Amazon GameLift
Amazon Lex
Amazon Machine Learning (Amazon ML)
AWS Managed Services
Amazon Mobile Analytics
Amazon Polly
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Amazon QuickSight
Amazon Rekognition
AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SMS)
AWS Service Catalog
AWS Shield Advanced
AWS Shield Standard
AWS Snow Family
AWS Storage Gateway
AWS WAF
Amazon WorkMail
Amazon WorkSpaces
Programme scope, delivery arrangements and suitability are confirmed during enquiry.