AWS Certified Developer – Associate — All Questions

A developer needs to see how a single request flows across API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB to find where latency is introduced. Which service provides this end-to-end view?

• a.Amazon CloudWatch Logs alone
• b.AWS X-Ray✓
• c.AWS CloudTrail
• d.Amazon Macie

AWS X-Ray traces a request across services and produces a service map showing latency and errors at each hop. CloudWatch Logs stores log text but does not stitch a trace together, CloudTrail records API management events for auditing, and Macie discovers sensitive data in S3.

An application repeatedly receives ProvisionedThroughputExceededException from DynamoDB during traffic spikes. Which is an appropriate first response in code?

• a.Implement exponential backoff with jitter on retries✓
• b.Delete and recreate the table
• c.Switch to a Scan instead of a Query
• d.Disable encryption on the table

The exception signals throttling; retrying with exponential backoff and jitter (which the SDK does by default) smooths spikes, and switching to on-demand or higher provisioned capacity helps for sustained load. Recreating the table, using a costlier Scan, or disabling encryption do not address throttling.

A read-heavy application needs microsecond response times for cached DynamoDB reads without changing much application logic. Which service fits best?

• a.Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached
• b.Amazon S3
• c.DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)✓
• d.Amazon Redshift

DAX is a fully managed, DynamoDB-compatible in-memory cache that returns cached reads in microseconds with minimal code changes. ElastiCache requires more integration work, S3 is object storage, and Redshift is a data warehouse for analytics.

To make Lambda logs easy to query for specific fields in CloudWatch Logs Insights, what should the developer do?

• a.Log everything as a single long string
• b.Disable logging to save cost
• c.Log only error messages
• d.Emit structured JSON log entries with consistent field names✓

Structured JSON logs let CloudWatch Logs Insights parse and filter by field, making troubleshooting far easier. Unstructured strings are hard to query, disabling logging removes visibility, and logging only errors hides the context needed to diagnose issues.