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Associate · DVA-C02Prep availableDVA-C03 from Oct 27, 2026

AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) practice exam and study path

A free, timed 65-question DVA-C02 practice exam — 130 minutes, the same length as the real exam, scored by domain, with every option explained after you submit. Also 130 practice questions you can check one at a time, a page for every task in the exam guide, and a study path. No sign-up.

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Developer - Associate exam pack:

$29once

For people who write code against AWS: building with AWS services and SDKs, securing application code and data, deploying through pipelines, and debugging.

The exam

Exam code
DVA-C02
Questions
65 questions (50 scored)
Time
130 minutes
Passing score
720 of 1,000 (scaled)
Exam fee
$150 (USD)
Question types
multiple choice, multiple response
Last exam day
Nov 30, 2026
Next version
DVA-C03, registration from Oct 27, 2026

DVA-C03 replaces this exam; registration opens October 27, 2026, and its exam guide is not out yet. This package follows the DVA-C02 guide (version 2.1) and moves to DVA-C03 when that guide is published.

From AWS's certification page and exam guide, checked Oct 10, 2026. The exam is scored as a whole (compensatory): there is no pass mark per domain.

Domains and weights

  • Domain 1: Development with AWS Services

    32%

  • Domain 2: Security

    26%

  • Domain 3: Deployment

    24%

  • Domain 4: Troubleshooting and Optimization

    18%

On our roadmap this comes after Solutions Architect - Associate. See the whole roadmap.

Practice

130 original practice questions, every option explained with the AWS documentation page that proves it. Free, no sign-up; progress stays on this device.

Your results on this device →

More practice exams

The lessons, the sample questions on every task page and the first full practice exam are free and stay free. A pack adds the further timed DVA-C02 practice exams.

Developer - Associate exam pack

$29once

  • Every paid DVA-C02 practice exam, timed, with every option explained
  • The next version of this exam included when it changes
  • Lifetime access — one payment, no subscription
  • 14-day refund, no conditions
  • 14-day refund, no conditions: ask within 14 days of buying and you get the whole payment back.
  • No pass guarantee. These are practice exams written by us from the exam guide and the AWS documentation; a score here does not predict your result on the real exam.

Study path

One module per exam domain. Lessons that already exist on BytePatterns are linked; the rest are being written.

  1. Module 1: Development with AWS Services

    1. 1Patterns in code: event-driven, choreography, orchestration and fan-outTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: Message Queues, SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge

    2. 2Synchronous and asynchronous calls, stateless services and loose couplingTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: Message Queues, Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling

    3. 3APIs with API Gateway: REST and HTTP APIs, validation, mapping templates and status codesTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: Designing a REST API

    4. 4Messaging and events from code: SQS, SNS and EventBridgeTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge

    5. 5Calling AWS from code: SDK clients, pagination, retries with backoff and idempotencyTask 1.1

      Lesson coming

    6. 6Resilient third-party integrations: timeouts, retries, circuit breakersTask 1.1

      Lesson coming

    7. 7Streaming data: Kinesis Data Streams and DynamoDB StreamsTask 1.1, 1.2

      Lesson coming

    8. 8Unit tests with AWS SAM and coding help from Amazon Q DeveloperTask 1.1

      Lesson coming

    9. 9Configuring a function: memory, timeout, environment variables, layers and extensionsTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: Lambda & Event-Driven Design

    10. 10Invocation and failure handling: event source mappings, destinations and dead-letter queuesTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: Lambda & Event-Driven Design

    11. 11Lambda in a VPC: reaching private resourcesTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: VPC: Subnets, NAT & Firewalls

    12. 12Lambda performance: cold starts, SnapStart and provisioned concurrencyTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: Lambda & Event-Driven Design

    13. 13DynamoDB keys, indexes, query versus scan and read consistencyTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: RDS vs DynamoDB, Consistency Models

    14. 14DynamoDB in code: conditional writes, transactions, batches, TTLTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: RDS vs DynamoDB

    15. 15Caching data: ElastiCache, DAX, lazy loading and write-throughTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: Caching, Invalidation and Eviction

    16. 16S3 from code: presigned URLs, multipart uploads and lifecycle rulesTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: S3: Consistency, Classes, Lifecycle

    17. 17Choosing a store by access pattern: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB and OpenSearch ServiceTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: RDS vs DynamoDB, SQL vs NoSQL

  2. Module 2: Security

    1. 18Cognito user pools and identity pools; federated sign-inTask 2.1

      Lesson coming

    2. 19Bearer tokens and API Gateway authorizers: Cognito, JWT and LambdaTask 2.1

      Lesson coming

    3. 20Credentials for code: the SDK credential chain, roles for EC2, Lambda and ECS, STSTask 2.1

      Partly covered by: Shared Responsibility & IAM

    4. 21IAM policies for applications: least privilege, resource-based policies and conditionsTask 2.1

      Partly covered by: Shared Responsibility & IAM

    5. 22Fine-grained and cross-service authorizationTask 2.1

      Lesson coming

    6. 23Encryption at rest and in transit; KMS keys and envelope encryptionTask 2.2

      Lesson coming

    7. 24Client-side versus server-side encryptionTask 2.2

      Lesson coming

    8. 25Certificates and SSH keys: ACM, AWS Private CA and development keysTask 2.2

      Lesson coming

    9. 26Keys across accounts and key rotationTask 2.2

      Lesson coming

    10. 27Secrets Manager and Parameter Store from codeTask 2.3

      Lesson coming

    11. 28Classifying, masking and sanitizing sensitive dataTask 2.3

      Lesson coming

    12. 29Multi-tenant data accessTask 2.3

      Lesson coming

  3. Module 3: Deployment

    1. 30Packaging: .zip archives, layers and container imagesTask 3.1, 3.4

      Partly covered by: Images, Layers & Multi-Stage Builds

    2. 31Configuration per environment: AWS AppConfig, Parameter Store and environment variablesTask 3.1

      Partly covered by: ConfigMaps, Secrets & Env

    3. 32Repositories and artifact stores: Git, CodeArtifact and Amazon ECRTask 3.1

      Lesson coming

    4. 33AWS SAM: templates, local testing and deploying to another environmentTask 3.2, 3.3

      Lesson coming

    5. 34Test events, integration tests and mocksTask 3.2, 3.3

      Lesson coming

    6. 35API Gateway stages, stage variables and custom domainsTask 3.2, 3.3, 3.4

      Lesson coming

    7. 36Lambda versions and aliases for approved releasesTask 3.3, 3.4

      Lesson coming

    8. 37CloudFormation and the CDK: templates, change sets and updatesTask 3.3, 3.4

      Lesson coming

    9. 38Pipelines: CodePipeline, CodeBuild buildspec and CodeDeploy appspecTask 3.4

      Lesson coming

    10. 39Deployment strategies and rollbacks: all at once, rolling, blue/green, canary and linearTask 3.4

      Partly covered by: Scheduling & Rolling Updates

    11. 40Elastic Beanstalk, Amplify and Amazon ECS deploymentsTask 3.4

      Partly covered by: ECS vs EKS vs Fargate

  4. Module 4: Troubleshooting and Optimization

    1. 41Reading metrics, logs and traces to find the causeTask 4.1

      Partly covered by: CloudWatch, Alarms & X-Ray, Observability Basics

    2. 42CloudWatch Logs Insights queriesTask 4.1

      Partly covered by: CloudWatch, Alarms & X-Ray

    3. 43Debugging deployments and service integrations from their logsTask 4.1

      Lesson coming

    4. 44Custom metrics from code: the embedded metric format and PutMetricDataTask 4.1, 4.2

      Partly covered by: CloudWatch, Alarms & X-Ray

    5. 45Structured logging and log levelsTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: Observability Basics

    6. 46Tracing: X-Ray, OpenTelemetry, annotations and metadataTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: CloudWatch, Alarms & X-Ray, Tracing a Request

    7. 47Alarms and notificationsTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: CloudWatch, Alarms & X-Ray

    8. 48Health checks and readiness probesTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: Probes & Self-Healing, Load Balancing

    9. 49Concurrency and throttling: Lambda and API GatewayTask 4.3

      Partly covered by: Lambda & Event-Driven Design, Rate Limiting

    10. 50Right-sizing: Lambda memory, profiling and Compute OptimizerTask 4.3

      Partly covered by: AWS Cost Levers

    11. 51Filtering messages: SNS subscription filter policies and EventBridge patternsTask 4.3

      Partly covered by: SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge

    12. 52Caching for speed: CloudFront cache keys, API Gateway caching and application cachesTask 4.3

      Partly covered by: CloudFront & Caching Layers, Caching

Every task in the exam guide

The exam guide splits each domain into task statements. Each one has a page with a short summary, the lessons that teach it and open sample questions.

Domain 1: Development with AWS Services

Domain 2: Security

Domain 3: Deployment

Domain 4: Troubleshooting and Optimization

How these questions are made

  • Written by us from the exam guide's task statements and the AWS documentation — never from real exam content.
  • Every option carries its own explanation and a link to the AWS page that proves it.
  • A question enters a timed exam only after an independent check; until then it is a practice question.
  • Results are a plain percentage, per domain too — not an imitation of AWS's scaled score.

Questions about the DVA-C02 practice exam

Is the DVA-C02 practice exam free?
Yes. The full practice exam (65 questions, 130 minutes) is free with no sign-up, and so are the 130 practice questions, the task pages and the study path. Your attempts are saved in this browser, on this device.
How many questions does it have, and is it timed?
65 questions in 130 minutes: the same number of questions and the same time as the real DVA-C02 exam. When the time runs out, the exam is submitted as it stands, and unanswered questions count as wrong.
Are the answers explained?
After you submit, not during: like the real exam, the timed exam gives no feedback until the end. Then you get your score overall and per exam domain, and every question with each option explained and a link to the AWS documentation page behind it. In practice mode an answer is explained as soon as you check it.
What does the Developer - Associate exam pack add?
3 more timed practice exams (Practice exam 1: 65 questions, 130 minutes; Practice exam 2: 65 questions, 130 minutes; Practice exam 3: 65 questions, 130 minutes), each scored and explained the same way, and the next version of this exam when it changes. One payment, lifetime access, no subscription. Everything above stays free. See the pack.
Can I get a refund?
Yes, with no conditions: ask within 14 days of buying and you get the whole payment back. The details are in the terms.
Is this an official AWS practice exam?
No. BytePatterns is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Amazon Web Services. Every question is written by us from the public exam guide and the AWS documentation, never from real exam content, and a score here does not predict your result on the real exam. AWS lists its own preparation resources on its certification page.