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. That list tracks what you actually 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 PDF nearby so domains and percentages stay current. That is a sane way to prep instead of guessing what will show up on the page.