AWS Certified Developer – Associate Cheat Sheet (DVA-C02)
Every Lambda limit, DynamoDB pattern, CI/CD service and IAM rule the DVA-C02 exam actually tests — organised the way developers build, not the way services are catalogued
About This Cheat Sheet
A focused 15-page reference covering every in-scope topic and service listed in the official DVA-C02 exam guide, organised around the four exam domains — Development with AWS Services (32%), Security (26%), Deployment (24%), and Troubleshooting & Optimization (18%). The cheat sheet is tuned for the developer voice: a dedicated EC2 section (User Data, IMDSv2, instance profiles, Auto Scaling, launch templates, lifecycle hooks), Lambda limits and invocation models with versions/aliases/DLQs/Destinations, DynamoDB capacity units and index patterns, API Gateway authorization mechanisms with stage variables and custom domains, CodeBuild / CodeDeploy (with lifecycle hooks and traffic-shifting) / CodePipeline workflows, X-Ray segments/annotations/metadata/sampling, CloudFormation helper scripts (cfn-init / cfn-signal / cfn-hup) and CreationPolicy/UpdatePolicy, Elastic Beanstalk .ebextensions / .platform hooks, ELB target groups with sticky sessions, and the IAM + KMS patterns examiners reach for when constructing questions about credential handling and data protection.
What's Inside
Developer Fundamentals
AWS SDKs and CLI v2, AWS CloudShell, Amazon Q Developer, the default credential provider chain, and why EC2/Lambda should always use IAM roles rather than hard-coded keys.
Amazon EC2 for Developers
User Data first-boot scripts, IMDSv2 session-based metadata, instance profiles, AMI and EC2 Image Builder fundamentals, placement groups, and Auto Scaling (launch templates, scaling policies, lifecycle hooks, warm pools).
AWS Lambda
All limits (memory 128 MB–10,240 MB, 15-min timeout, payload sizes, /tmp, concurrency), the three invocation models (sync, async, event source mapping), cold-start mitigation (Provisioned Concurrency, SnapStart), layers, extensions, execution roles, versions/aliases with weighted routing, and DLQs vs. Destinations.
Amazon API Gateway
REST vs. HTTP vs. WebSocket APIs, proxy vs. non-proxy Lambda integration, and every authorization mechanism (IAM SigV4, Cognito, Lambda authorizer TOKEN/REQUEST, JWT on HTTP API, API keys with usage plans). Throttling, caching, canary deployments.
Amazon DynamoDB
Partition and sort key design, GSI vs. LSI tradeoffs, capacity modes (On-Demand vs. Provisioned) with RCU/WCU math, eventually vs. strongly consistent reads, Streams, TTL, transactions, batch operations, DAX, Global Tables, conditional writes and optimistic locking.
Storage, Database & Containers
S3 for developers (pre-signed URLs, multipart upload, event notifications, Transfer Acceleration), EBS and EFS. RDS vs. Aurora, RDS Proxy for Lambda connection pooling, Aurora Serverless v2, ElastiCache caching strategies. ECS/EKS/Fargate/ECR and task roles.
Application Integration
SQS Standard vs. FIFO, visibility timeout, long polling, DLQ, delay queues, Extended Client for >256 KB messages. SNS fan-out, message filtering. EventBridge rules, archive/replay, Pipes, Scheduler. Step Functions Standard vs. Express with Retry/Catch error handling.
Identity, Auth & Encryption
IAM users vs. roles vs. policies, the policy evaluation order. STS AssumeRole variants. Cognito User Pools vs. Identity Pools. KMS keys, envelope encryption, rotation. A detailed Secrets Manager vs. Parameter Store comparison.
CI/CD
CodeBuild (buildspec.yml phases), CodeDeploy (appspec.yml, blue/green, canary, linear traffic shifting for Lambda/ECS), CodePipeline, CodeArtifact, AWS Amplify. Integration with GitHub and Bitbucket for source.
Infrastructure as Code & Deployment
CloudFormation templates, intrinsic functions, change sets, stack sets, drift detection, deletion policies. SAM shorthand, sam local invoke. CDK in TypeScript/Python. Elastic Beanstalk deployment policies (immutable, blue/green, rolling).
Monitoring, Logging & Troubleshooting
CloudWatch metrics, Logs, Logs Insights, EMF, alarms. AWS X-Ray distributed tracing (enabling, service map, sampling, trace ID propagation). CloudTrail management vs. data events. The three-way CloudTrail / CloudWatch / X-Ray question pattern.
Configuration, Networking & Analytics
AWS AppConfig for feature flags with staged rollout and automatic rollback. Systems Manager Parameter Store. VPC basics, security groups vs. NACLs, VPC endpoints, ELB types, CloudFront (Lambda@Edge, CloudFront Functions, signed URLs). Developer-relevant analytics: Athena, Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon Data Firehose, OpenSearch.
Why This Cheat Sheet Helps
DVA-C02 is breadth plus depth in a narrow set of services. Questions reliably test the things that bite developers in production: cold-start mitigation, DynamoDB hot partitions, API Gateway authorizer choice, CodeDeploy traffic-shifting policies, Secrets Manager vs. Parameter Store, Lambda IAM, optimistic locking with conditional writes. This cheat sheet puts those decisions side by side with the specific language examiners use.
It assumes you already have about a year of hands-on AWS development experience. Use it as a final-week review to reinforce patterns you already recognise, fill gaps surfaced by practice exams, and prime yourself for the exact phrasings the exam uses.
How to Use It
Skim the whole sheet once end to end to see the shape of the exam. Then use CloudNinja's free DVA-C02 practice exam to find your gaps. When you miss a question, jump to the relevant section — most likely Lambda (section 2), DynamoDB (4), Identity/Auth/Encryption (9), or CI/CD (10), since those carry the most exam weight.
On exam day minus three, go through every Exam Tip call-out. Those are the decision rules distilled to their essence — they're the pattern-match you need on test day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this AWS Developer Associate cheat sheet free?
Yes, completely free with no signup required. Download the PDF directly from CloudNinja and use it as a study reference for the DVA-C02 exam.
How much AWS experience do I need before DVA-C02?
AWS recommends around one year of hands-on development experience with AWS services — specifically writing code that uses the SDK, deploying applications, and working with identity, IAM roles, and managed services like Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB. If you have less than that, consider starting with the Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02).
Is DVA-C02 easier than the Solutions Architect Associate?
They are different rather than one being easier. DVA-C02 is deeper in fewer services (Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, CI/CD) while SAA-C03 is broader across networking, architecture, and storage. Developers often find DVA more natural because questions match day-to-day coding decisions; architects often find SAA more natural because questions match system-design decisions.
Is this cheat sheet updated for the current DVA-C02 exam?
Yes, it is built directly from the official DVA-C02 exam guide (developer-associate-02) and includes every in-scope service listed there, plus modern guidance on services AWS has recently changed or deprecated. Always cross-reference the official AWS exam guide before your test date.