AZ-204Associate LevelMicrosoft Azure

Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate

The foundational developer credential required for modern cloud developers and an official qualifying prerequisite for the AZ-400 DevOps Engineer Expert certification. Tests building containerized solutions on Azure, Azure App Service, serverless Azure Functions, Cosmos DB, and event-driven architectures with Event Grid and Service Bus.

Recommended Prerequisites: One to two years of professional development experience and proficiency in at least one Azure-supported programming language.

Exam Duration

120 Minutes

Passing Score

700 / 1000

Registration Cost

$165 USD

Exam Format

Multiple Choice / Drag-and-Drop / Case Studies (40-60 Questions)

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Complete Exam Blueprint & Tested Competencies

Total 100% Weight

1. Develop Azure Compute Solutions

Weight: 28%

Key Exam Topics Tested:

Azure App Service: deployment slots, configuration settings, custom domains, scaling plans
Azure Functions: triggers, input/output bindings, execution contexts, durable functions
Azure Container Apps and Azure Container Registry (ACR): multi-container applications, revisions

Practical Competencies & Skills Required:

✓Configure deployment slot traffic swapping for zero-downtime releases in App Service
✓Implement stateful orchestration workflows using Azure Durable Functions

2. Develop for Azure Storage

Weight: 18%

Key Exam Topics Tested:

Azure Cosmos DB: partition keys, request units (RU/s), consistency levels (Strong to Eventual)
Azure Blob Storage: blob tiers (Hot, Cool, Cold, Archive), metadata, lifecycle management rules
Securing storage access with Shared Access Signatures (SAS) and stored access policies

Practical Competencies & Skills Required:

✓Select partition keys in Cosmos DB to avoid hot partitions in high-throughput workloads
✓Generate time-limited SAS tokens with specific permissions using the Azure SDK

3. Implement Azure Security

Weight: 22%

Key Exam Topics Tested:

User and application authentication using Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL)
Managed Identities (System-assigned vs User-assigned) for passwordless resource authentication
Azure Key Vault: storing, retrieving, and rotating secrets, keys, and certificates

Practical Competencies & Skills Required:

✓Authenticate web apps against Azure SQL or Key Vault without hardcoded credentials using Managed Identities
✓Configure OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow with Entra ID

4. Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Optimize Solutions

Weight: 15%

Key Exam Topics Tested:

Integrating Application Insights: distributed telemetry, custom events, metrics, exceptions
Querying Log Analytics with Kusto Query Language (KQL)
Implementing caching with Azure Cache for Redis (eviction policies, TTL expiration)

Practical Competencies & Skills Required:

✓Instrument web apps with the Application Insights SDK to trace end-to-end request latency
✓Diagnose intermittent HTTP 500 errors using KQL queries

5. Connect to and Consume Azure Services

Weight: 17%

Key Exam Topics Tested:

Azure Event Grid: event publishing, filtering, Webhook event handlers
Azure Event Hubs: real-time event streaming, consumer groups, partitions
Azure Service Bus: queues vs topics/subscriptions, dead-letter queues, session handling
Azure API Management (APIM): policies (rate limiting, mock responses, JWT validation)

Practical Competencies & Skills Required:

✓Implement asynchronous pub/sub messaging patterns using Azure Service Bus topics
✓Enforce rate limits on APIs using inbound API Management policy XML

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Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate

Recommended Prerequisites: One to two years of professional development experience and proficiency in at least one Azure-supported programming language.