Top 5 Resources to become a Certified Spring Developer Professional in 2024

Ever since Pivotal has announced that Spring training is not mandatory for becoming a Certified Spring developer (now VMware EDU-1202), more and more experienced Java programmers who have been using Spring for years are preparing for this certification exam. This is obvious because the expensive Spring training, which cost around 32000 USD in the USA and most Western nations and about 50,000 INR in India, was the biggest hurdle in getting Spring certified and becoming a certified Spring professional. 

Even though the training is the best way to prepare for certification because it is totally focused on the certification exams and will cover all topics there, it is not affordable for most Java developers worldwide. Now, the cost of Spring certification has just been reduced to 200 USD from the whopping 3200 USD it cost earlier.  

Allowing Java developers to appear in Spring certification without mandatory training has also encouraged the popular self-study model, which is quite popular because even traditional Oracle Java certifications are based upon that. 

It allows programmers to prepare at their own pace, and it's also not very expensive.  All you need is a study guide, an online course, and a Spring mock exam simulator.  

Even though you can use Spring framework books to prepare for certifications, the study guide is particularly essential. The study guide has many benefits over general books, like, they are focused on the certification exam. They fully cover all topics and have topic-wise assessment questions.

They also do an excellent job of highlighting key concepts from the exam point of view. If you want to do well on Spring certification, you must choose a study guide and a course for your preparation, and you will find a log of excellent resources in this article.

5 Best Resources to become a Certified Spring 

Unfortunately, there are not many resources available to prepare for Spring certifications because it is still not that popular as compared to Oracle's Java certification. One reason for that was a few developers opting for Spring certification due to expensive mandatory training.

Now that restriction is lifted, you can expect more study guides, books, and mock exams will come to help Spring developers preparing by themselves for Spring certifications.

Btw, Suppose you are an experienced Java developer and using the Spring framework for a couple of years, and you think that you can pass Spring certification without much preparation. In that case, I suggest you go through David Mayer's Online Spring Mock test, It's a free test, and if you can score over 80%, you are ready for the real exam.

Anyway, here are a couple of useful study guides for Spring certification currently available in the market. This list includes study guides for Spring core, Spring web, and Spring Enterprise Integration certifications.

1. Spring Professional Certification Exam Tutorial

This is an excellent course on Udemy, which is specially designed for Spring certification and currently. This is a multi-part course, and each part covers one module, there are 8 modules to prepare for Spring certification.

This course explains and answers all questions from the Spring Professional Certification Study Guide. Each answer to exam the topic is explained in detail with a video tutorial, description, and a good example for you to get a deep understanding of the discussed topic. With this course you will get all required knowledge and skills to pass Spring Professional Certification Exam.

The course is divided into 8 modules:

• Module 01 - Container, Dependency, and IoC
• Module 02 - Aspect-Oriented Programming
• Module 03 - Data Management: JDBC, Transactions, JPA, Spring Data
• Module 04 – Spring Boot
• Module 05 - Spring MVC and The Web Layer
• Module 06 – Security
• Module 07 – REST
• Module 08 – Testing

This is the first module of the entire course, and inside, you can find answers to all topics from Spring Professional Certification Study Guide first section, which is Container, Dependency, and IoC.

2. Official Spring Professional Exam Study Guide

This is a free study guide for the Spring Core Professional Certification version 5 from the Pivotal itself. It contains some frequently asked questions and information about the exam itself. It also includes puzzles that test whether you know the essential concepts or not. 

These Spring questions are also an excellent resource for an interview. I have also included many of them in my Spring certification practice test which you can take to build up the speed and accuracy required for this exam. 

If you are using Spring for a couple of years, then you already know the answers to most of them. They are also useful to quickly check if you are ready for Spring certification or not because the passing percentage is quite high for Spring certification. You need to get 38 out of 50 questions to pass the Spring certification.

In general, If you can answer those questions along with David Mayer's online Spring Mock exam, then you are ready for the real exam.

3. Pivotal Certified Spring Professional Certification Exam: A Study Guide 

This is a proper study guide for Spring core certification. It covers all topics and essential concepts. It also has topic wise questions for Spring certification to prepare well. One book, which you can combine with Spring in Action to prepare really well for the exam.

4. Official Spring Core Professional Exam Brief

This is another free study guide from Pivotal, which contains some must-know information about Spring certification and topic wise questions to check your understanding. It just contains topic-wise distribution and how much weightage each topic hold in the real exam.

It also contains some useful information for the exam itself like a number of questions, format, and passing score. And you can also use them for preparing Spring interviews.

5. Spring Framework 5: Beginner to Guru

There are not many courses out there that cover Spring 5, which is very important if you are preparing for Spring Professional v5.0 certification. This c covers the Spring framework in-and and explains all the new features of Spring 5.0 like the Reactive Programming model and support for Java 8 and JUnit 5.

That's all about some of the best resources to prepare for Spring certifications. We have looked at some of the best study guides available for Spring core, Spring web developer exam, and Spring Enterprise Integration Specialist exam. I have also shared a couple of books to learn the Spring framework in general before reading a study guide to focus more on exam topics.

The study guide offers several benefiter from the conventional public. They cover all exams topi have topic-wise quizzes and quizzes and multiple-choice questions to prepare better, but the courses on Udemy are also great. You can use them in conjunction with a study guide and book to prepare better.


Other Spring Certification Resources For Java Developers

• Spring Framework Masterclass - Beginner to Expert
• How to Crack Spring Certification in the first attempt
• Java & Moie's Core Spring 4.2 Certification Exam PDF
• Java S.E. 11 Certification Books and Courses
• How to prepare for Vmware Spring Professional Exam
• Spring Certification Benefits and Advantage
• Top 5 Courses to learn Spring Boot in depth
• Spring Certification Books and PDF
• 10 Free Spring Boot Courses for Developers
• Top 5 Courses to learn Spring Cloud from scratch
• Top 5 Courses to learn RESTful Web Services with Spring
• Top 5 Courses to Learn Microservices with Spring 
• My Spring Certification Practice Test (250+ questions)

Thanks for reading this article, if you find these best Spring certification resources useful then please share with your friends and colleagues. If you have any other resothat which help prepare the Spring certificate please to share them with us.

P.S. -  If you are an experienced Java developer and using the Spring framework for 3 to 5 years and want to get certified for your skill, I suggest you go through David Mayer's Online Spring Mock test; it's a free test. If you can score over 80%, then you are ready for the real exam.