Associate Developer Exam PHP

Hello, everyone. If you're watching this video, you're already ahead of your fellow developers in the journey of getting MongoDB associate developer certified. My name is Sonali and I'm a lead for curriculum services engineering here at MongoDB. In this video, we'll take a deep dive into your certification preparation.

And by the end of this video, you would know what to expect in the MongoDB associate developer exam, learning objectives covered in the exam, useful resources to refer, and how and where to ask for support while preparing for the exam. Towards the end of this video, I'll share a bonus tip with you all that will multiply your chances of getting MongoDB associate developer certified. So let's get started. Let's now talk about MongoDB associate developer certification, which is offered by MongoDB University in four different flavors of NodeJS, C#, Java, and Python.

The exam questions are curated in a way that they test your practical knowledge of MongoDB and how comfortable you are in building applications with MongoDB. The certification exam will test you on concepts like the document model, CRUD, indexes, data modeling, and aggregation. In addition to this you'll also be tested on your familiarity with MongoDB drivers in the programming language of your choice. If all this seems too much to grasp, let me help you by talking about each of the sections covered in the developer exam and how you can have a more focused preparation.

As a prerequisite for this exam, you should be familiar with the fundamentals of the database system and basic JavaScript programming. Let's now do an in-depth exploration of the certification exam sections. The first section in the exam will be MongoDB overview and the document model, which is 8% of the total exam questions. For this section, you must know how a database contains multiple collections, and a collection contains several documents, and how the data is stored in the documents, and the value types supported by JSON and BSON.

One sample scenario for this section is that you're given a set of documents and you need to identify if they can coexist in a collection. The next section is CRUD, which assesses your ability to handle documents while performing create, read, update, and delete operations. This section constitutes 51% of the total exam questions. And you can score high in this section by practicing on the Mongo shell, or by using MongoDB Atlas' Data Explorer feature to interact with any sample data.

Starting with create, which is how you add a document to a given collection, you must know what methods are provided by MongoDB to insert a single or multiple documents into a collection and the behavior of an insert operation. You should also be able to identify the properly formed insert statement. Moving on to read, which is how you would query either all documents in a collection or a set of documents that match a given query filter. For this section, you must know the proper formation of find method to fetch the documents from a given collection and how to build query filter documents using expressions that determine which records to select for a read operation.

You should be able to use comparison, logical, element and array query and projection operators and common cursor methods, like sort, limit, count, and skip to modify the result set returned by a query. A sample scenario for this section is to identify projection among a set of expressions to display or hide the fields in a document, as shown in your screen. Let me give you three more scenarios to understand the expected questions in the exam. In the first scenario, you would be given a query using operators like $in $and, $less than, $greater than, or $match and you will have to identify the documents matched by some combinations of these operators.

In the second scenario, you would be given a set of fields that we want to display in the result documents, and you'll have to choose the best query option among the given answer choices. The last scenario, you'll be given a query statement. So how will you count the number of documents returned by the query? The next major part of the CRUD section is the update command, which as the name suggests, updates or modifies the documents in the collection.

Let me underline some important concepts which would be relevant for your preparation. You need to know what methods are provided by MongoDB to update the documents in a collection. Also check out these additional methods to modify the documents in your collection based on filter and sort criteria. You should be able to form an update statement using the right query filter that determines the documents to be updated, and update operators like set, unset, increment, and max.

In addition to this do familiarize yourself with the update operators, and how to use upsert to insert or replace a document. In the exam you might expect questions like, you're given a set of documents and an update statement. How would it change the existing documents in a collection? Or you're given a before and after state of a database and you have to identify the correct update or upsert statement.

Or you might also be given a scenario about updating a document and information on where it should be inserted, if it does not already exist. And you need to identify the correct upsert command to be used. Lastly, be able to identify the correct update statement to modify multiple documents. Now that you have gained an understanding of the structure of questions in this section, let's discuss the last CRUD operation, which is delete.

For this part, we'll begin by familiarizing ourselves with different delete methods offered by MongoDB and how to use query filters to delete a single document or multiple documents in a collection. A sample scenario is to identify a delete expression to remove a document from a collection based on a query condition. In the CRUD section, you might expect some questions related to MongoDB aggregation. And to prepare for this, you must know what is an aggregation pipeline and how to build one to process the documents using stages, like sort, group, match, project, et cetera.

A sample scenario for this section is to identify the correct output of an aggregation expression. That's all folks for the CRUD section in the developer exam. Before moving ahead do give yourself a pat on the back because we are halfway through our certification preparation. Next critical section of the exam is indexes, which comprises 17% of the total exam questions.

For this section, you must know why do we need indexes in the first place, and types of indexes offered by MongoDB. You should also be familiar with the methods used to manage indexes and identify the scenarios where having an index might not be the best possible solution. Sample scenarios for this section are to interpret the explain output for different combinations of queries and indices. Or you might be given a query on a collection and you'll have to identify the most performant index.

Moving on to data modeling, which is 4% of the total exam questions, you must understand MongoDB's flexible schema and how you can model your data, as per the requirements of your application. You should also know how to structure your documents based on the decision to either embed or use references. You are all sorted for the next section of the exam, which is tools and tooling. If you have been practicing and interacting with the sample data set on Atlas' Data Explorer feature.

Note that this section has 2% weightage in the exam. This last section will test your familiarity with MongoDB drivers in programming language of your choice, and its weightage in the exam is 19%. For this section, you must know the purpose of using a driver and its advantages, how to connect to a database and components of a URI string used by Mongo client. Do familiarize yourself with the CRUD and aggregation syntax for your chosen driver.

The sample scenarios for this section will be very similar to what we have covered until now. However, in reference to your preferred MongoDB driver. Well now that we have done a detailed analysis of the certification exam sections, it's now time for the bonus tip. While you are attempting a certification exam question, remember that you will not be scored negatively for any wrong answers.

So if you're not sure which option to choose, take a smart guess. If it is correct, you'll score high. Even otherwise you have nothing to lose. I would also like to highlight MongoDB University and our official documentation.

Check out the links on your screen. And do leverage these free resources to prepare for the exam. In addition to this, you can also be a part of our vast global community of developers with diverse background and tech expertise. The idea is to connect, learn, share, and grow together as a group.

If you have any questions related to your certification preparation, do reach out to us through the links as shown on your screen. Our team of curriculum services engineers would be happy to help you in your preparation. Wishing you all the best.