I recently passed the Spring Certified Professional exam! You can see more details about the certification here.
Preparation
It took me roughly five months to prepare for the certification. My preparation included studying theory and concepts, doing hands-on labs, and doing exploratory projects.
If you can study full-time, I’m certain you can prepare for the exam within a shorter time period.
The beauty of the certification is it encourages one to learn more about Spring and its inner workings. Indeed, one can accomplish a lot with Spring (especially Spring Boot) without knowing how it fully works behind-the-scenes. The abstractions that Spring provides is quite elegant and convenient, indeed.
If you’d like having a tangible goal of passing the exam while being encouraged to deeply learn, this certification is for you.
Books
I’ve bought three books that helped me with the certification:
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Spring Start Here by Laurentiu Spilca
- This book is praised by many as an excellent introduction to Spring. I agree and it has served me well. I greatly enjoyed its illustrations and simplified explanations of beginner-daunting topics such as aspect-oriented programming (AOP).
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Spring in Action (Sixth Edition) by Craig Walls
- This is an excellent reference book in creating real-world Spring projects. It’s mostly comprised of code examples that engages you to follow along.
- I suggest you skip the chapters unrelated to the exam for the meantime.
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Spring Security in Action (Second Edition) by Laurentiu Spilca
- This is a book that’s solely focused on understanding Spring Security. It has some overlap with the Spring in Action book. But, Spilca’s book takes more time in explaining Spring Security concepts and has more illustrations that gives better understanding on how it works.
- Similar to Spring in Action, this book also has some chapters unrelated to the exam and I suggested you skip them for now.
Courses
I’ve used several hands-on, Udemy, and official Spring courses.
The Confident Spring Professional
This course was the first effort I made in learning Spring properly early this year. I’ve recommended this course in a separate post. It has given me a strong foundation about Spring. Its focus of being more hands-on and project-based was an excellent preparation for me.
Exam Tutorial Modules Series
To gain in-depth theoretical knowledge for the exam, I studied the Spring Professional Certification Exam Tutorial Modules by Dominik Cebula on Udemy.
It consists of eight modules. I recommend taking your time in going through all of them because it gives you a rock-solid foundation on Spring. It’s slightly outdated but the difference can be easily remediated.
It also does a great job in digesting the official Spring documentation. If you find yourself struggling to read a huge wall of text from the docs, perhaps Dominik’s courses can ease that for you.
Spring Academy Learning Path
The Spring Certified Professional Learning Path used to be a paid pre-requisite in acquiring the certification. But as of April 5, it became free after Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.
I still recommend going through the learning path as I found the hands-on labs fun and meaningful to do. I also adopted some coding styles from their labs which I liked.
In terms of the theoretical concepts discussed, I found the learning path lacking on that, so I resorted to books and other courses for more information.
Spring I/O Talks
There’s a lot of valuable talks in the Spring I/O YouTube channel. I recommend watching the talks related to the certification such as this one on the topic of testing.
Mock Exams
Practicing mock exams is an effective way to prepare. I only used those created by Vincent Vauban: Spring Professional Certification - 6 full Tests. They have helped me greatly.
Although they’re not typically included in a Udemy learning subscription, they’re a worthy separate purchase and investment.
Closing Thoughts
That’s how I prepared for the certification exam. If I were to choose the most impactful materials, it would be: the books, Dominik Cebula’s courses, and mock exams.
My Thanks
I give thanks to Carla de Beer for her Medium post about preparing for the same exam. Her insights inspired me to take the exam. I also discovered Dominik Cebula’s courses from her.
I also extend my thanks to the Java User Group Philippines. They hosted insightful talks and discussions about Spring which helped me gain more knowledge. They also shared Spring-related learning materials which I’ve referenced. From there, I was also notified that the Spring Academy pro courses became free; which prompted me to take the learning path.
The Spring Certification Forum at JavaRanch also provided invaluable insights about other exam takers’ experiences while preparing for the exam.
Onwards
I’m excited to continue my learnings on Spring. I’m currently practicing Domain-Driven Design (DDD). I’m reading Vaughn Vernon’s red book: Implementing Domain-Driven Design. I’m also learning how to apply the tactical patterns using Spring Modulith and jMolecules.
I’m also looking forward to read the “prequel” book on Spring: J2EE Design and Development by Rod Johnson. I’ve been putting off this book for a while since I was preparing for the exam. I’m happy that I can now find the time to read it.
If you’re planning to take the exam, I wish you the best of luck.
Exciting times ahead! :)