AWS Certified Developer – Associate

Setting up your development environment and understanding credentials.

• Configuring the AWS CLI and SDKs (Boto3/Node.js).
• Understanding IAM Users, Roles, and Policies for developers.
• Using IAM Roles with EC2 instances.
• AWS credentials and programmatic access best practices.

Building and triggering event-driven functions.

• Lambda function architecture and programming model.
• Synchronous vs. Asynchronous invocations.
• Lambda event sources (S3, SQS, API Gateway).
• Managing function versions, aliases, and environment variables.

Creating and managing scalable RESTful APIs.

• REST APIs vs. HTTP APIs vs. WebSocket APIs.
• Lambda proxy integration.
• Securing APIs with resource policies, IAM, and Lambda authorizers.
• Using API Gateway caching, throttling, and usage plans.

Designing and querying high-performance NoSQL tables.

• DynamoDB core concepts (Tables, Items, Attributes).
• Primary Keys (Partition Key, Sort Key).
• Query vs. Scan operations.
• Global Secondary Indexes (GSIs) and Local Secondary Indexes (LSIs).

Optimizing performance and processing data streams.

• DynamoDB Streams and Lambda triggers.
• DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for in-memory caching.
• Capacity Modes: Provisioned vs. On-Demand.
• Best practices for data modeling.

Decoupling your application components for resilience.

• Simple Queue Service (SQS) - Standard vs. FIFO queues.
• Simple Notification Service (SNS) - Pub/Sub messaging.
• Decoupling microservices with SQS and Lambda.
• SNS + SQS fan-out pattern.

Automating the build and test process for your code.

• Source control with AWS CodeCommit.
• Automated builds with AWS CodeBuild.
• Understanding the `buildspec.yml` file.
• Storing build artifacts in S3.

Automating the full release lifecycle.

• Automated deployments with AWS CodeDeploy.
• Deployment strategies (In-place, Blue/Green).
• Orchestrating the full pipeline with AWS CodePipeline.
• Building a CI/CD pipeline for a serverless application.

Defining your serverless infrastructure as code.

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with AWS CloudFormation.
• AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM).
• Using the SAM CLI to build, test, and deploy serverless apps.
• SAM templates for Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB.

Securing your application and managing user identity.

• Amazon Cognito User Pools for authentication.
• Cognito Identity Pools for granting AWS credentials.
• AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for encryption.
• Securing API Gateway with Cognito User Pools.

Finding and fixing issues in your cloud application.

• Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Metrics, and Alarms.
• AWS X-Ray for distributed tracing and performance analysis.
• Debugging Lambda functions locally and in the cloud.
• Monitoring API Gateway and DynamoDB performance.

Final review and exam strategies.

• Review of the core exam domains and services.
• Strategies for scenario-based questions.
• Full-Length Practice Exam Simulation.
• Review of Practice Exam & Final Q&A.