How to crack Apigee Certification - Sharing my experience getting Apigee Certified

Hello Everyone,

**UPDATE**: Apigee Certification have gone through some changes in 2018. L1 & L2 are combined into one single certification called API Engineer Certification. API Engineer certification is very similar to L1 certification. API BaaS related question are removed from certification.

Every developer loves getting certified on technologies. It helps out of the box to showcase his skills on a particular technology. Getting certified on new technologies is a great value to any developer who would like to pursue his career on same. Apigee Certification is one of that & many in the industry sure weighs a lot of value to Apigee Certification.

About Apigee Certification:

Apigee certification is not just about Apigee Edge knowledge, It's all about APIs & API Eco Systems. It tests your understanding of APIs, API Design Patterns and of course Apigee Products. You can find more about Apigee Certification in official site here.

My Experience of Apigee Certification:

Let me start with this, I am an APIGEEK. I work at Apigee. You might be thinking what's the big deal Apigee Employee getting certified on its own Apigee Edge product & certification. Trust me, It's actually a big deal for me and you will find out same in this article.

Why it's big deal for me !! I have been working at Apigee for just more than 2 years and more than 18 months I worked as Technical Architect for Developer Services team. My job was around working on Apigee Developer Portal, Architecting & Implementing Apigee Developer Portal built on famous open source CMS Drupal.

Later, I switched my role to an evangelist where my job includes taking Apigee awesome open source products like API First IoT Platform ZettaJS, Swagger tools like Apigee-127 (swagger-node) into developer community. I never worked on Apigee Edge in end to end customer project scenarios. It's all bits & pieces, learning Apigee Edge in last few months.

Certification Preparation:

Apigee 4MV4D Videos ( Published after this post ) & E-learning videos was very helpful in preparation for certification. Make sure you follow below points for Knowledge Exam which is actually the tough nut to crack.

  • Go through all the videos & implement same practically. We have a tendency to skip / forward videos assuming we know these concepts if you worked on Apigee Edge. E-Learning videos covers great detail & talk about practical use cases. These are very important and covered in certification knowledge exam.
  • You need practical experience of Apigee Edge. Make sure you have worked on end to end scenarios of building API Programs. Apigee Knowledge Exam tests all these aspects.
  • Questions related to Apigee deployment plugins like Maven, Apigee Node Tool are covered in Apigee knowledge exam. Make sure you get familiar with both.
  • You will be surprised with a couple of questions related to SmartDocs & Swagger. It was easy for me since I came from Apigee Developer Services background. But, for Apigee Edge Developer they are clueless most of the times. Make sure you get to know basics of Smartdocs & Swagger.

Knowledge Exam - 1st Level:

  • It's a proctored exam. You can take from your workplace or from kryterion test centers in your location. It's better to take it from test centers and you don't need to worry about setting up external cameras & network issues.
  • If you would like to take it from your home or workplace make sure you go through setup documentation, use an external camera, ambient lighting, absolutely no external disturbances.
  • Make sure, kryterion support chat window in handy if you see any issues taking it from your home or office location.
  • 134 Multiple Choice Questions in 2 hours.
  • Some of the questions / answers will trick you. It's not like choose 1 out of 4 options. Sometimes you need to choose correct answers among 4 / 5 options. There may be one / two / three / All correct answer or even none. Make sure you think before you answer.
  • Unless you have practical experience on Apigee products it's difficult to get Apigee Certified.

My Experience with Apigee Knowledge Exam:

  • After going through few questions in Knowledge Exam, It was not as I thought earlier. It covers many aspects of Apigee Edge & Questions are of great quality.
  • Don't expect questions like which policy do you use to transform payload from XML to JSON. Certification is all about differentiating beginners from experts.
  • I got confused most of the times with choose one or more among provided options types of questions. Make sure you provide special attention to same.
  • Some are tricky, all options look like either correct or wrong. These are especially related to designing APIs related questions.
  • I had technical issues with office network, sentinel software. It got crashed couple of times, network disconnected in the middle. I need to work with kryterion support to resume the test. It took more than 30 minutes to get back. Make sure you have an open network without any firewalls & stable network connection.

I took knowledge exam from my work location. I felt very tired to concentrate two straight hours for the exam. No Wonder, We live in constant interruptions world of Emails, Phone calls, Messages and more importantly for some (Faceb**k, Twitt**, Wha**app). Prepare yourself for 2 hours online test 🙂

It's time for result:

I have failed in my first attempt. Scored 67%. Just 3 % short of making the cut. You need to score 70 % or more to clear same.

It's not a surprise for me. I never worked practically end to end on Apigee Edge since I worked on developer services product most of my time in Apigee. I learnt Apigee Edge by answering questions in the community. Yes, Actually you guys helped me to understand and learn apigee edge.

I took some time to rectify my mistakes & get practical knowledge on API Lifecycle. In my second attempt I cleared the knowledge exam.

Any Samples Questions for Apigee Knowledge Exam?

We have seen a couple of community members asking for same. According to Certification policies, we are not allowed to share any of the questions that are covered in knowledge Exam. But, let me come up similar questions but not exactly same ones.

Q : Select Policies from below list which stores a counter ?

A : Spike Arrest

B : Quota

C : Concurrent Rate Limit

D : Raise Fault

Practical Exam - 2nd Level:

I liked this part of certification. You don't need to remember everything & you will have all the help of Apigee Docs & Google Search 🙂

The practical exam consists of the implementation of a scenario-based API solution and fifteen-minute interview regarding aspects of your implementation. You will have two weeks to complete the practical exam, expect to spend eight hours on the test and fifteen minutes on the interview. You must pass both parts of the Certification Exam to earn your Apigee Developer Certification.

I would like to take this opportunuty to thank @JennyB from Apigee Certification team in helping me & motivating me to clear the certification exam. Thank you @JennyB .

Feel free to comment if you have any queries related to same.

Comments
davissean
Staff

Thanks for sharing this @Anil Sagar!

santosh_ghalsas
Participant V

Hi Anil,

I thank you very much for this detailed post about certification. It gives lot of info on how to prepare.

I was searching whole world to get some info on this.

I have few things that need clarification -

1. Online Exam.

A. Wanted to know if there is any negative marking involved and if they consider partial correct answers(like if there are 3 correct options as an answer and we choose two correct ones).

B. Till what extend/depth the node.js, apigee127 will be covered in questions. Will they ask any practical questions on like what will be result if this code is called.

C. Will there be any question on developer portal?

2. Practical Exam and Interview-

A. Do we need to use our free org that we got after signing up on Apigee to complete this?

B. Do we need to submit the API URL to the examiner? Like we did in the training of Create and Manage APIs(conducted by Michael Bissel).

C. What is the expectation from the interview? Do we need to explain how we have approached to the solution of the API, what policies used, etc,.?

Reply to this will be great help.!

Thanks again.!

Best Regards,

Santosh.

anilsr
Staff

Dear @santosh_ghalsasi ,

Glad it's helpful. Great Questions, Please find reply below.

1. Online Exam.

A. Wanted to know if there is any negative marking involved and if they consider partial correct answers(like if there are 3 correct options as an answer and we choose two correct ones).

-- No Negative marking

-- I don't think they will consider partial correct answers for marking. @JennyB Any idea ?

-- Not many number of questions are choose many out of all. Approximately 10 - 15 % questions are these type. Remaining all choose 1 out of 4.

B. Till what extend/depth the node.js, apigee127 will be covered in questions. Will they ask any practical questions on like what will be result if this code is called.

  • I don't think it's in depth when it comes to node.js & apigee-127. It's not much indepth into code. Most of the questions will be related to volos extensions, basic node.js stuff. E-Learning videos covers the details.

C. Will there be any question on developer portal?

  • Very few questions related to smartdocs. Basics of smartdocs will work. I guess 2 - 4, not many.

2. Practical Exam and Interview-

A. Do we need to use our free org that we got after signing up on Apigee to complete this?

  • No, Once you are done with Knowledge exam, Apigee will provide Org details & credentials. You will do the practical exam on Apigee provided org.

B. Do we need to submit the API URL to the examiner? Like we did in the training of Create and Manage APIs(conducted by Michael Bissel).

  • Yes, You need to submit either CURL calls / Postman Collections with some instructions to use same. POSTMAN collection is an easy way to go.

C. What is the expectation from the interview? Do we need to explain how we have approached to the solution of the API, what policies used, etc,.?

  • Yes, how you have approached to the solution of the API, what policies used, why etc.
Abhishek_Subram
Participant V

Thanks for information @Anil Sagar.

anilsr
Staff

Anytime 🙂

enrique_melgare
Participant III

Thanks, i'm afraid for the interview, ESL here 😞

anilsr
Staff

No issues @kiquetal_edge , Let Apigee team know about same and they will help you. BTB, English is not my first language too 🙂 All the best if you are taking Apigee Certification.

gargi_talukdar
Participant V

Hi Anil Sagar, When can I register for the Level 2 Apigee Developer Certification after completing Level 1? I checked my certification account and cannot see the Level 2 registration option.

Thanks,

Gargi

anilsr
Staff

@GargiTalukdar , Please write to education@apigee.com / certification@apigee.com . Apigee will assist you with registration. @JennyB , FYI.

maivizhi_arunag
Participant IV

Thanks for Sharing @Anil Sagar.

Here are My Queries :

  1. Would like to know the number of attempts allowed for both levels.
  2. Is there any time limits to register for Level 2 once Level 1 is completed?
anilsr
Staff

@maivizhi , Thank you for your interest.

Let me loop in Certification lead regarding same. @pdani Need your feedback on above questions.

Not applicable

Hey @maivizhi, There is no limit on the number of attempts you can make on Level1 and Level2 Certification exams. However, I think there is a 72 hours, before you can make another attempt on Level1 exam (just so you get some time to review material etc). I see quite a few people make more than one attempt to clear Level1 so it is quite normal.

No, there is no time limit on when / if you register for Level2 exam. If you decide to register for Level2 exam, do it within a year of Level1 Certification passing. However, we don't have any strict guidelines defined around that as yet.

maivizhi_arunag
Participant IV

Thanks for the info @pdani

sidd-harth
Participant V

Hi @Anil Sagar, in your second attempt, what was the difficulty level. Did you get any similar question from your first attempt?

I have given L1 and got 68% I have few queries regarding the answers and question asked in exam. I have already contacted Apigee Education. But I need to clarify some queries regarding some question. Can I Have your email address, i dont want to list the questions in community.

anilsr
Staff

@Barahalikar Siddharth , So sorry to hear you missed just by 2 % just like me.

Please post all your queries to Apigee Education Team education@apigee.com . I will send out my email on a separate note.

anilsr
Staff

@Barahalikar Siddharth , Check your email (Email used in community portal) inbox.

Not applicable

@Anil Sagar Hi Anil thanks for sharing the experience. Can you kindly provide me the learning videos of Michael Bissel of Create and Manage API's . DO you have any copy of it . Thanks in advance.

sidd-harth
Participant V

Hi @Vikas Lall, may we know why you are very much interested in Michael Bissel videos? The are videos in Apigee Academy where the videos explain everthing about apigee products, tools and about apis.

Even I searched for Bissel videos an year ago, did not find any.

It would be better if you go through the Academy videos

anilsr
Staff

@Vikas Lall , As said by @Barahalikar Siddharth , Apigee Academy videos covers most of the topics. I am not sure whether michael Bissell videos are still relevant to Apigee current version.

Anyway, I have found some videos here in youtube.

NOTE : Apigee DO NOT recommend above videos since they might not be relevant to today's Apigee Edge Version. We recommend Apigee Academy videos for learning & getting started.

akash_ojha
Explorer

Thanks for the info. It helped a lot in preparartion.. I have cleared L1 and waiting for its certificate.Its been around 45 days now. How and when would I get the certificate Any help would be great.

anilsr
Staff

Glad it helped @akash ojha , Congratulations on getting L1 certified. As far as i know, We don't send any physical / paper certificate. On completion of certification, you will get below things.

  • A certification badge that can be displayed on Linkedin and other social profiles
  • Recognition as a Certified Developer on the Apigee Community
  • Verification of your Developer Certification to customers and other parties

@pdani , Do they need to complete L2 certification also to get badge & above things ? Can you please clarify here ?

@akash ojha , Regarding your query (I have cleared L1 and waiting for its certificate.Its been around 45 days now. How and when would I get the certificate ? ), Can you please post as a separate question for better context ?

Not applicable

Dear Akash,

Level1 certification is a pre-requisite for the L2 certification, which is a project based exam and consists of a project given as a part of exam to be completed in 2 weeks.

We don't provide any certificate for L1 completion and it is considered as a first step for Apigee Certification, final certification exam being the L2 Certification. You will be provided the mentioned badges after you finish the L2 Certification.

Thanks.

--Pradeep

Not applicable

Dear Anil Sagar,

Thank you very much for such detailed information! It cleared my most of the queries related to certification.

I want to appear Apigee level 1 certification. But the videos are too slow to watch continuously (I was going through the Fundamentals of ReSTful API design), while other video channels are streaming fine without buffering (at my home as well as office network). Is there a way to download/save these videos to watch offline or post these videos to youtube which is quite faster? I would really appreciate if you can provide a solution or any alternative way.

Thanks in advance!

Joydeep

sidd-harth
Participant V

Hi @Joydeep Paul, it should be an issue with internet speed.

The videos are hosted on Vimeo, you can download the videos using any free software available for browsers.

Did you try changing video quality?

joydeep02780
Participant II
@pdani

/ @Anil Sagar

Can you please let me know if I need to pay for any re-attempt in Level1 exam? If yes, is it same amount $100?

Thanks in Advance!

joydeep02780
Participant II

@Anil Sagar,

Thanks for this post. I just cleared L1 exam and it helped a lot.

Now I am preparing for L2, can you pls let me know if Node.JS, Microgateway will be part of Level 2 test/interview?

anilsr
Staff

Awesome @Joydeep Paul , Congratulations on getting Apigee Certified !! Glad to know article helped you.

For L2, It should be straight forward. You can easily go ahead and take L2. It's like open book. I don't remember Node.JS . Microgateway for sure it's not covered in L2.

-------------------------------------

Anil Sagar

5997-screen-shot-2017-11-23-at-75916-pm.png Learn Apigee Concepts in 4 Minutes HandsOn

joydeep02780
Participant II

Thanks @Anil Sagar, this would help!

joydeep02780
Participant II

@Anil Sagar, can u pls help me on how to register level 2 certification. i posted in a separate link - https://community.apigee.com/questions/52322/how-to-register-for-apigee-level-2-certification.html

Thanks in advance!

Not applicable

Thanks for the wonderful writeup Anil 🙂 Very informative to get started with Apigee certification!

udayakaky
Explorer

Hi Anil,

Thanks for the update, if Level 1 & 2 are combined now, will the test be done for Level 1 first and once we score 70% we move on to Level 2?

Please explain in detail about the the exam pattern. As you have given above some sample question for Level 1, can you please provide example for Level 2 as well.

Can you do a 4MV4D for exam pattern. that really helps...

Thanks

Udaya

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