Top 3 Books and Courses to Crack Spring Professional Certification in 2024

These are the best books you can read to prepare for your Spring Professional Certification Vmware EDU-1202 exam in 2024

javinpaul
Javarevisited
9 min readJul 24, 2021

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3 Best Books and Courses to Crack Spring Professionals Certification — VMware EDU-1202 Exam for Java Developers
Spring Certification books

Hello Java Programmers, if you are preparing for Spring Professional Certification and looking for the best books and courses then you have come to the right place.

Earlier, I have shared the best courses to learn Spring Framework, Spring Boot, Spring Security, Spring Cloud, and Microservices and in this article, I Am going to share the best books and courses you can join to prepare for Spring Professional certification from scratch.

Ever since Vmware has removed the requirement of mandatory training to become a certified Spring developer, many Spring developers have been asking for good resources to prepare for Spring Professional V5.0 Exam like books, courses, mock exams, study notes, etc. to prepare for Spring Core Certifications via self-study.

Since, earlier, you cannot give the Spring certification exam without attending an online or instructor-led core Spring training, which costs around 3200 USD in the USA and North America and 50K INR in India, many experienced Spring developers refrain from becoming certified Spring developer.

Now that restriction has been lifted and it’s not mandatory to take training to take Spring certification, many Java developers who have good working experience in the Spring framework are looking to get recognition for their skill.

This is also a very good opportunity for both junior and intermediate Java developers to add this in-demand certification to your resume as you just need to spend 200 USD to buy an exam voucher. It’s even cheaper the Oracle’s Java certification which costs around 246$ in the USA and around 10K INR in India.

Spring is one of the most popular Java frameworks of the last decade. Introduced in October 2002 with the Idea of dependency injection, Spring has come a long way to become the default Java application development framework.

With its popularity, the demand for Java Developer with Spring skills also grows and to date, Spring remains the key technology to get a Job in the Java web development world.

Having Spring certification (VMware EDU-1202 on your resume not only increase your knowledge about Spring framework but also improves your chances of getting the Java developer position you are vying off, hence I recommend all Java developer to become Spring certified professional.

3 Best Books to Prepare Vmware Spring Professional Certifications Exam in 2024

Here are a couple of good books and courses to prepare for the Spring Core or Spring Professional Certification Exam. The industry also recognizes certified developers like Oracle Certified Java Developer and Pivotal Certified Spring developers.

Vmware, the company behind the Spring framework, provides several Spring-based certifications like the Spring Professional certification exam (VMware EDU-1202) to recognize your Spring core skills.

1. Pivotal Certified Professional Spring Developer Exam: Study Guide

The 1st edition of the Pivotal Certified Professional Spring Developer Exam by Iuliana Cosmina is the only study guide available for Spring core verification like Spring Professional V5.0 Exam.

The good part of this book is that it covers all exam topics given in an official study guide and it is a structure for certification i.e. it contains quizzes and practice questions after each chapter to make you familiar with concepts that are important from the exam perspective.

You will also find useful tips sprinkled around the book for Spring certification. In nutshell, an ideal book to prepare for Spring Core Certifications if you rely on self-study instead of training.

For better preparation, I also suggest you combine this book with the Spring Professional Certification Exam Tutorial — Module 01 course on Udemy. This is a special course created keeping this exam in mind and also answers all the questions from the official Spring exam guide.

best spring certification study guide for beginners

Since Spring training material was designed for Spring certifications and till last month training was mandatory to take the exam, many candidates just take training to use the study material to prepare for Spring core certifications. This means absolutely no demand for any study guides for Spring certifications.

Now that restriction has been lifted and training is optional, many experienced Java and Spring developers, who prefer self-study over classroom training are looking to get certified I expect more books and study guides will come into the market, but till then you can use these two books to prepare for Spring core certification, I mean, Spring Professional v5.0 Exam.

One more thing you can do is to buy David Mayer’s Spring Mock Exam, this will help you to get yourself familiar with the exam patterns and the level of questions you can expect in the real exam. You can use this simulator to improve your speed and accuracy as well as fill the gap in your knowledge. It will also help you to find your strong and weak areas.

2. Spring in Action

This is one of the best books to learn Spring for a long time, even I learned the Spring framework by reading this book. The best part of this book is that it is now updated and the 5th edition covers Spring 5, which makes it an ideal book to prepare for Spring Professional v5.0 Exam and Spring Professional v5.0 Exam.

Though you can use the earlier version of the book as well, it makes more sense to read the latest version to prepare recent exam topics added on the 5.0 version of Spring Core Certification.

If you want you can also combine this book with Spring Framework 5: Beginner to Guru course for better learning.

best book to learn spring in depth

Even though this book is not organized as per the exam topics, as it is not a study guide but a general book to learn Spring framework it covers most of the exam topics.

It is also a recommended book by Pivotal and mentioned in the official Spring Certification Study Guide for v5.0 and Study Guide for v5.0 You can also combine this with its close cousin Spring Boot in Action to cover the Spring Boot topic.

3. Grokking the Spring Boot Interview

This is my book, which I have written for Java developers who are preparing for Spring Boot interview as well as preparing for Spring professional certification. I this book I have answered most of the questions from the Official Spring Certification Guide.

This book covers all the exam topics plus a few more are for interviews. Here is the list of Spring topics covered in this book, most are the same as given Spring certification exam guide.

1. Container, Dependency, and IOC

2. Spring Bean Lifecycle

3. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP)

4. Spring MVC

5. Spring Boot Intro

6. Spring Boot Auto Configuration

7. Spring Boot Starter Dependency

8. Spring Boot Actuator

9. Spring Boot CLI

10. Spring Boot Testing

11. Spring Cloud Questions

12. Spring Data JPA

13. Spring Security

The best thing about this is that you can use this book to quickly find answers for the questions given Spring certification guide and then you can better prepare those topics in quick time.

You can buy this book on Gumroad, you can also code friends20 to get 20% OFF, a special discount to all of my readers.

Here is the link to buy this bookGrokking the Spring Boot Interview

Spring certification guide

If you like reading on Kindle then you can also check the Kindle version of the book as well.

2. Best Online Courses to Prepare Spring Professional Certifications in 2024

You can also combine these books with some excellent online Spring Framework courses for better results. Some of the courses are especially created to pass Spring Professional certifications like the one I am going to share with you now.

1. Spring Professional Certification Exam Tutorial — Module 01

This is the best course material to prepare for Spring Professional Certification. It explains and answers all questions from the Spring Professional Certification Study Guide is not only useful for certification but also for Java interviews.

Each answer 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 the required knowledge and skills to pass the Spring Professional Certification Exam (VMware EDU-1202).

This course covers 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. If you are serious about passing Spring Professional Certification then I also suggest you check other modules of this course like Spring Professional Certification Part 2, 3, 4, and 5.

The course covers each and every topic of the Spring certification exam like all the modules described below:

best course for spring certification

Apart from these two books and courses, you can also purchase David Mayer’s Spring Web Simulator to prepare well. It contains more than 400 questions on various exam topics and provides you much-needed practice to improve your speed and accuracy.

Remember, you need to score around 78% to pass the Spring certification i.e. you need to answer 38 questions correctly out of 50 questions in 90 minutes.

I have also created special Spring Professional Practice tests to fine-tune your creation and check your preparation level. This is a Udemy course and you can use these practice tests to find your strong and weak areas to work upon.

The Udemy course contains 5 practice tests, each has 50 questions in the real exam format. I highly recommend you to join the course and do these tests in a real exam scenario to build the speed and accuracy required to pass this tough exam on the first attempt. Here is the link

That’s all about some of the good books to prepare for Spring Core Certification. Even the best of the books become quickly out-of-date but thankfully Spring in Action is updated to Spring 4 and it’s still the best book to prepare for Spring Professional V5.0 Exam (VMware EDU-1202).

I also suggest you buy an exam voucher as soon as possible because the exam voucher is now very cheap, around 200 USD and I expect them to become a little more expensive as demand will now increase.

They are also valid for 1 year so you can take the exam within 1 year, which mentally provides a deadline to you to become Spring certified. You can even make it a goal to come a certified Spring professional this year if you want to.

Other Useful Resources for Spring Core Certifications

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these best Spring Certification (VMware EDU-1202) books and courses then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P. S. — If you are looking for some online courses to prepare for Spring Professional certification then I strongly recommend you check out the Spring Professional Certification Exam Tutorial course on Udemy. It’s an 8 module course and answers every single question from the official Spring certification exam guide.

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javinpaul
Javarevisited

I am Java programmer, blogger, working on Java, J2EE, UNIX, FIX Protocol. I share Java tips on http://javarevisited.blogspot.com and http://java67.com