HOW TO PASS Salesforce PLATFORM DEVELOPER 1 EXAM

 I attempted this exam on 29th July 2019 and passed.

So i decided to share my experience with community.

Well you must first gone through this Link  to understand what this exam is all about and target audience. Specially below section for percentage in exam of questions of different topics.

That will help you to understand

• Your weakness and Strong points.
• Direction to how you should move forward

Now let’s talk about my experience.

I believe and as far as i remember most of the questions revolves around these topics.

Salesforce Apex

• Some Small Programs in which more than logic your knowledge will be tested i did not find this question Salesforce Apex oriented but general OOProgramming oriented.
• Must know properties, static keyword, conditions, condition terminators. Iterations,methods,classes,instantiation.
• Must know the Exception class and how we can create custom exceptions.
• Difference between DML Statements. i.e Database.Insert and Insert.
• Need to understand Order of Execution and apex effect on that.
• Bulkified Code and must know why a code is not bulkified.
• Must know the map, set importance in bulkification.
• Must know the impact of writing SOQL in loop or any DML in Loop.
• How to monitor Schedulers, batches, future methods.
• Dynamic Apex
• Best way to Get Picklist values , Field labels , recordtypes in Apex.

Salesforce Visualforce Pages , Controllers and Extensions

• Must know the MVC in term of force.com
• Difference among controllers (Standard,custom) and extension.
• Must know how to create VF pages with standard controller.
• Must know Apex standard actions.
• Must know the Pagereference class and its all variants.
• Key difference between extension and Apex standard/Custom controller.
• VF page usage and steps to use i.e Tab, Layout
• Some basic knowledge of lightning , its javascript classes.
• Need to know how to use Stylesheets in Visual Force.

Test Classes

• Best Practices of writing test class.
• choose the most appropriate reason of writing test class.
• Implications of Test Setup.
• Best way to Load data for test class.
• Appexchange app and test classes.

Declarative Questions & Data model 

• MVC in term of Declarative salesforce.
• What to choose workflow OR Trigger
• when to write workflow OR Flow OR Process builder OR Trigger
• Thing that we can do with Flow but not with WF/PB or vice versa.
• Need to understand deeply difference between lookup and Master Detail.
• Benefits of Master detail or drawbacks.
• Benefits of Lookup Or drawbacks.
• Rollup summary Usage, benefit and limitations.
• Scenarios to understand what to use Rollup summary Or trigger or what.
• How to write proper SOQL for a requirement.
• How to write SOSL and its usage and benefits.
• Study SOQL injection vulnerabilities.
• Difference Between SOQL and SOSL.

Debug and Others 

• Metadata API and its implications.
• How to debug?
• Must know the features of developer console and Setup Area.
• Deployment and its implications with or without manage package.
• Must know the best Order of these ways to implement a process

1. Declarative features
2. Reuse Unmanaged Package
3. Manage Package
4. Custom Solutions

I don’t remember rest , But if you will cover all these topics i believe it will help you a lot. Wish you a very good luck.

Thanks,

Hasan Shamsi