AWS Certified Developer - Associate Practice Test
The AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) practice page focuses on building and maintaining cloud applications. Its question bank includes scenarios involving event-driven compute, APIs, application data, configuration, caching, queues, and workflow coordination. These contexts help you work through service-selection decisions and consider how application components behave when traffic rises or a downstream dependency is unavailable.
Exam overview
About the AWS Certified Developer - Associate Exam
Developer tasks often require connecting application code to managed AWS services while accounting for reliability, responsiveness, and operational effort. Practice scenarios address choices such as using a key-value database for application state, caching data when some staleness is acceptable, and centralizing runtime settings so values can change without code edits. Other questions involve triggering code from events, exposing functions through HTTPS endpoints, and separating producers from consumers with queues. Workflow orchestration scenarios bring in branching and retry behavior, while ordered-message questions focus on preserving processing sequence and handling temporary consumer outages. For each case, identify the application requirement first, then compare which service capability directly addresses it and what tradeoff the scenario allows. This approach connects service knowledge to the practical work of developing, deploying, and debugging cloud-based applications.
Sample Practice Questions
Review a selection from this exam's published US Practice Tests practice bank.
A Lambda function must store and retrieve its own processed event state using a fully managed key-value database with predictable low-latency access. Which service is the best choice?
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Correct answer: ADynamoDB is a managed NoSQL key-value/document database that is commonly used for serverless applications needing fast reads and writes. RDS is relational, EFS is shared file storage, and Redshift is for analytics warehousing.
A web application needs to reduce latency for frequently requested data that changes infrequently and can tolerate occasional staleness. Which approach is most appropriate?
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Correct answer: AA caching layer such as Amazon ElastiCache is appropriate for frequently accessed, infrequently changing data because it reduces backend load and improves response time.
A developer wants an application to read the same setting value from a single managed location at runtime, with the value stored as plain text and updated centrally without changing code. Which AWS service is the best fit?
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Correct answer: ASystems Manager Parameter Store is designed for storing configuration data such as strings and application settings that multiple services can retrieve at runtime. Secrets Manager is better for sensitive credentials, DynamoDB is a database, and S3 is object storage rather than a parameter store.
A team wants to run code in response to events without provisioning servers, and the code may be triggered many times in parallel. Which AWS compute model is designed for this use case?
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Correct answer: AAWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events and scales automatically with demand.
A developer wants to deploy a web application behind a managed endpoint and route requests to a Lambda function using HTTPS. Which AWS service commonly provides this frontend entry point?
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Correct answer: AAPI Gateway is commonly used to create and manage HTTPS APIs that integrate with Lambda functions. CloudFront is a CDN, AppSync is for GraphQL APIs, and Route 53 is DNS.
A developer wants to decouple an order-processing application so that the producer can continue even if the downstream consumer is temporarily unavailable. Which service is commonly used for this pattern?
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Correct answer: AAmazon SQS is a managed message queue that lets producers and consumers operate asynchronously, helping absorb temporary outages and traffic spikes. Route 53 is DNS, WAF is a web application firewall, and Athena is for querying data in S3.
A team wants to build a stateless API that scales automatically with traffic and runs code without managing servers. Which AWS compute service is the best match?
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Correct answer: AAWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events and scales automatically without managing servers. EC2 still requires instance management, FSx is file storage, and Storage Gateway is for hybrid storage integration.
How to use this practice test
Access is free. A session presents up to 20 random questions from the 50-question bank, covering the AWS application-development scenarios represented there. After submitting, review the results to identify which service choices or design constraints need more attention, such as event handling, API access, state storage, or message ordering.
Preparation tips
- For each scenario, separate the required behavior—such as low-latency state access, centralized plain-text settings, or tolerated cache staleness—from incidental details before selecting a service.
- Compare asynchronous messaging choices by checking whether the prompt requires decoupling, ordered processing, or handling a temporarily unavailable consumer.
- Trace event-driven designs from trigger to function and HTTPS endpoint, noting which component invokes the code and which exposes the request interface.
- For workflow questions, map each step, branch, and retry requirement before deciding whether managed orchestration fits better than custom coordination.