I Passed the Salesforce.com Certified Advanced Developer Exam – So Can You! | Jeff Douglas

I Passed the Salesforce.com Certified Advanced Developer Exam – So Can You!

July 13th, 2009

I passed the Salesforce.com Certified Advanced Developer exam yesterday but it was not easy test. The questions were very tricky and some of the answers I knew only because of experience. You can read all of the suggested course material and take the DEV-501 class, but I think people that don’t develop in Apex every day are going to be at a disadvantage. You really need to dig into the language and get your hands dirty in the real world.

From what I’ve heard there appears to be a number of different test versions but hit roughly the same material. My exam consisted of some high level questions (eg “What are the advantages of….”), comparisons of method and class signatures and specific code examples.

If you are new to Apex then the DEV-501 class is a must. If you have been doing Apex for sometime and are really mucking around with the language and comfortable with it, then I’m not sure how much of a benefit the class will be to you. I studied for about 3 days straight before the exam and here is what I did:

Force.com Apex Code Developer’s Guide – You must know this document from start to finish.

Visualforce Developer’s Guide – You must know this document from start to finish

Force.com Developer Guide – You should read through this book also as it has alot of nuggets. Pay attention to the tips scattered through out the book

Salesforce Object Query Language – You must know SOQL

Force.com Web Services API Developer’s Guide – I breezed through the document but the material on the exam didn’t seem relevant

Here are some high points of the exam:

Visualforce – know all of the components, how they are used and their attributes

Controllers – know the differences between custom controllers and extensions and how they function

Unit testing – how to write test with test coverage

Email services – there were surprisingly numerous questions regarding inbound and outbound email

SOQL – you must know how to construct SOQL queries with and without related objects

Trigers – you must know what you can and can not do with triggers. The order of execution is also important.

Classes, method and annotations – really dig into the classes section of the Apex Developer’s Guide

All of this stuff is covered in the books and nothing is inside information. If you study and know the material you should be able to pass your first time.

I passed the Salesforce.com Certified Advanced Developer exam last Friday but it was not easy test. The questions were very tricky and some of the answers I knew only because of experience. You can read all of the suggested course material and take the DEV-501 class, but I think people that don’t develop in Apex every day are going to be at a disadvantage. You really need to dig into the language and get your hands dirty in the real world.

If you are new to Apex then the DEV-501 class is a must. If you have been doing Apex for sometime and are really mucking around with the language and comfortable with it, then I’m not sure how much of a benefit the class will be to you. All of the documentation you need is available from developer.force.com. I studied for about 3 days straight before the exam and here is what I did:

Force.com Apex Code Developer’s Guide – You must know this document from start to finish.
Visualforce Developer’s Guide – You must know this document from start to finish.
Force.com Developer Guide – You should read through this book also, as it has alot of nuggets. Pay attention to the tips scattered through out the book.
Salesforce Object Query Language – You must know SOQL

Here are some high points of the exam:

Visualforce – know all of the components, how they are used and their attributes
Controllers – know the differences between custom controllers and extensions and how they function
Unit testing – how to write unit tests with proper test coverage
Email services – there were surprisingly numerous questions regarding inbound and outbound email
SOQL – you must know how to construct SOQL queries with and without related objects
Trigers – you must know what you can and can not do with triggers. The order of execution is also important.
Classes, method and annotations – really dig into the classes section of the Apex Developer’s Guide

All of this stuff is covered in the books and nothing is inside information. If you study and know the material you should be able to pass your first time. I believe that passing the Salesforce.com Certified Force.com Developer exam is still required before taking the Advanced Developer exam.

Categories: Apex, Salesforce, Visualforce

9 Comments

Nishant July 20th, 2009
Planning to give the exam soon, finished 501 class few months back.Had a question about the Programming assignment.How big is it? How may days we get? How hard is it? Does it cover exercies from Dev 501 class.

Any help will be appreciated….Thanks
Rob August 28th, 2009
+1 on more info re: coding assignment. Thanks for the tips and info
Arun September 14th, 2009
I know this is a little late message,
but Congrats !!!

So you are also done with the programming
assignments & essays ? It would be really
helpful if you could throw some light
on that.
Scott September 14th, 2009
I failed the programming assignment but you can probably learn from my mistakes. It’s very important to clarify what they mean by “Large Data Sets” :)
Arun October 19th, 2009
Steve,
Thanks for all the tips here. I took the Multiple choice 2 days back and I passed it. I was told that

the window for assignment section would open up sometime later.

Meanwhile, do you have anyother tips on what would the programming assignment look alike ? how many days

would we be provided to work on the assignment ? Any hints around that would be helpful.

Once again, I would like thank you for the tips so far,.

Thanks.
Arun October 19th, 2009
Jeff,
Thanks for all the tips here. I took the Multiple choice 2 days back and I passed it. I was told that

the window for assignment section would open up sometime later.

Meanwhile, do you have anyother tips on what would the programming assignment look alike ? how many days

would we be provided to work on the assignment ? Any hints around that would be helpful.

Once again, I would like thank you for the tips so far,.

Thanks.
sudhan November 3rd, 2009
hi i’m planning to take salesforce.com developer exam DEV401..Please guide me in this.
SM January 2nd, 2010
please let me know more about the assignment and essays assessment to clear dev – 501 exam. i have cleared the multiple choice answers test…
jeffdonthemic January 2nd, 2010
The email notification for the assignment and essay went out a couple of weeks ago so no one has taken it yet. I believe the deadline is early February.