Woo Hoo!!!!
I am VERY happy to announce that yesterday I passed the Salesforce Platform Developer I and II transition exam. This exam is offered to Advanced Developers that want to take an easy path to getting their Platform Developer certs.
But, that does not mean this test is easy. The questions are scenario based (as you would expect) and do not test whether you memorized the material, but rather whether you “know” it like the back of you hand.
There are only 16 questions and you have 30 minutes to complete the test. That makes it a bit nerve racking in my opinion.
The official study guide lists the main areas you need to focus on for the test and I would say that is a pretty good start. The list consists of the following:
According to Official Study Guide
- Describe the capabilities of base-system objects such as sharing objects, history objects, metadata objects, multi-currency, and Chatter objects.
- Describe the different capabilities of and use cases for the various Salesforce development platforms (Heroku, Fuel, Force.com).
- Describe how to design code that accommodates multi-language, multi-currency, multi-locale considerations.
- Describe the implications of compound data types in Apex programming.
- Describe the interactions between Visualforce/Apex with Flow/Lightning Process Builder.
- Given a scenario, describe when and how to use Apex managed sharing.
- Describe the use cases for the various authentication techniques.
- Given a set of requirements, describe the process for designing Lightning components.
- Describe the common performance issues for user interfaces and the techniques to mitigate them.
- Describe how to expose Apex classes as SOAP and REST web services.
- Describe how to use system classes to integrate with SOAP- or REST-based web services.
- Describe when and how to use metadata, streaming, and Analytics API to enhance Apex and Visualforce solutions.
- Given a scenario, identify the appropriate tool to analyze application performance profiles and troubleshoot data and performance issues.
I would add to this list some other areas that I suggest you also concentrate on:
- @InvocableMethod and @InvocableVariable versus ProcessPlugin interface
- Querying the PermissionSet
- Using Developer Console to debug an app (especially checkpoints)
- Using Webservice keyword and considerations
- Querying based on the Currency field
- How to register certificates
- Apex Managed Sharing considerations
Just to give you an idea, I spent about 3 weeks and over 20 hours studying for the exam. Even though I work with Salesforce development everyday, the exam does cover topics that I do not necessarily deal with on a daily basis, so I would suggest you spend some time reviewing the topics listed above.
Good luck on the test and let me know how you did.
