Becoming a Spring Certified Professional
Disclaimer: The author is currently employed by VMware, but this content is their personal opinion and is based on their experience studying for and taking the exam. The content and opinions are not those of VMware.
TLDR
If you want to prove that you have Spring skills or need to get started learning those skills quickly, then the certification offered by VMware is a good place to start. The exam is a very reasonable difficulty if you cover the study guide and will prove that you understand many aspects of the framework.
If you are just looking to learn Spring or deepen your knowledge, then you don't necessarily need to take the exam, but the training courses geared towards the exam are very effective learning tools in themselves.
Some History
For someone researching this exam, there are a few things that might be a little confusing. So let's clear those up.
Why is this a VMware exam?
Spring is an open source framework, so how it is connected to VMware?
It turns out this has happened through some acquisitions. A company was founded (now called Spring) to maintain and develop features for the Spring framework. This eventually became part of Pivotal. Pivotal got merged into VMware and Spring came along for that ride.
How does that affect certification?
The Spring certifications were initially created under the Pivotal name, but are now part of the VMware training program. The result is that there are some different pages, references, and resources you may find scattered around the web that have different names for the exam. Some of the materials you find might reference Pivotal, VMware, or Spring.
This is a little confusing, but the takeaway is that you can access the current materials on the VMware training pages here.
What does this exam cover?
The exam covers a little bit of all the major Spring framework topics as well as some Spring Boot.
This includes: Security, Container Management, Configuration, MVC, Testing, AOP, among others.
Download the exam guide on the exam page to see the full list of topics and study questions. These are a good representation of what you'll need to know and a good way to check to see if you're ready to take the exam.
Why is this exam valuable?
If you are new to Spring...
If you've never used Spring or have just gotten started, then the exam is a good goal to set to ensure that you learn a spectrum of skills that you'll need as you build out apps. The study guide alone is a great resource as to what to study to become proficient.
The training supplied by VMware is also a great way to go if you want to get up to speed as you prepare to hop on a new project.
If you already know Spring...
If you've been coding with the framework for a while, then you might not need to study some of the basic topics. However, using the exam as a goal is great for identifying areas that you might not have touched yet or where you could benefit from a deeper look.
Prior to taking the Spring training and exam, I had been coding using Spring off and on for some years. I never really took a deep dive though so I didn't know about a lot of the features I hadn't used yet or how to code most efficiently using some of the latest features.
Personally, I feel like the run-through of some patterns like AOP and web security were among the best I've seen in any condensed training materials. Review and clarification are always valuable in themselves.
And of course... If you pass the exam then you get a certificate to show that got the content down. I definitely feel a difference in credibility when I hear someone saying that they've used Spring before and someone telling me that they passed the exam.
My Takeaway
Before starting to study for the exam I knew enough to code using the basic Spring features I needed.
After I took the training in preparation for the exam, I realized that there were features I didn't know about as well others that I was not using in optimal ways. So the process of studying was very valuable.
What's the training like?
VMware offers some training geared toward the exam. This can be taken in person or remotely as a set of videos and covers all the topics found in the exam.
There are two training options. There is a shorter Spring Boot training, and a Spring Core training. The Core training covers Spring as well as Spring Boot.
I took the remote option for Spring Core training and watched the videos.
They were so comprehensive and valuable that I would recommend them even if you don't take the exam. They cover each major topic in Spring (e.g. security, MVC, config) with an overview, a dive into the features, some use cases, and then coding exercises.
Each section in the training videos is followed by exercises and solutions to the exercises. The exercises and solutions are supplied via a Git repo. This allows you to try the questions and then look at the solutions side-by-side in the same repo. The videos also go over the solutions in-depth so that you can check each step of your work or figure out where you might have gone wrong.
Normally I don't love doing training videos (I fall asleep a lot), but I have to say these were excellent! There's a lot of material covered, and it's organized very intuitively.
What's the exam like?
The exam is multiple choice and really reminded me of standardized tests like the SAT. There are some questions where multiple choices are valid, which isn't something I prefer. Also, some of the questions can be a little tricky. That being said, I feel it's a fair assessment of how much one knows about the content outlined in the study guide. There is some info on the question setup at the end of the study guide. I would recommend reviewing that.
You'll definitely need to know both high-level and low-level concepts. On the high-level side you need to know the value of the different parts of Spring (e.g. why we use dependency injection or aspect-oriented programming). On the low-level side, you'll need to be able to look at code and determine what is wrong, or what code should be used in a certain situation.
I took the exam remotely while being monitored by a proctor since it was during the pandemic lockdown. I believe you can take it in person as well, but the online approach is easy so I'd recommend that. I found it best to use my laptop as you need to be in a room that conforms to the exam company's expectations. So you can't have other people around or have anything on your desk or walls - just your computer and a bottle of unlabeled water (and your laptop charger!).
Recommended Study Approach
If you really want to know the Spring content then you might as well study for the exam. To prep for the exam, I would start with the Spring Core training course.
For each section of the course, it's a good idea to do all the exercises to verify understanding.
After you have finished those exercises then look at the study guide questions and ensure that you can answer all of them. If you get stuck on any of those, then taking a look at the Spring Docs helps a lot.
If you make it through all the training and have all the study guide questions answered then you should be good to go take the exam.
References
Exam Page
VMware Training
Study Guide Answers
Spring Training (Points back to VMware)
Final Notes
Study Guide Answers
It's a little tough to know that you have all the right answers to the study guide as they aren't supplied anywhere... I found that someone posted their answer on their blog, and that was a nice verification for me. Some of the answers are a little difficult to find, so this is a good sanity check:
The exam is being updated over time...
The exam has been changing since VMware became its maintainer. So over time the title, the number of questions, and web resources have shifted around.
This has created a little confusion as there are still Pivotal references/docs out there and multiple references to the exam with different names on different pages or blogs. It could be called the "Spring Professional", the "Spring Develop Certification", the "App Modernization Certification", or something else.
To be safe, reference the VMware page. You'll find info there as to which exam is the current exam.
As the exam is updated each year new versions become available, but the old versions and their reference pages are maintained for an overlapping period. So it's important to look through the VMware training pages for the current year exam and its study guide.
Special Note for VMware Employees
Since this is VMware training it is available for free to employees through the company training portal. The exam is also free. The cost during registration should be $0 when you log in as an employee.
If you have any questions, reach out and I'll help if I'm able to.
Best of luck!
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