MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect Level 1 Exam Guide
Summary
A MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect Level 1 is expected to expertly craft and oversee an organization’s Anypoint Platform strategy. The MCPA – Level 1 exam assesses whether an architect possesses the necessary knowledge and skills to foster a cohesive application network from various integration solutions. This is achieved through API-led connectivity using the Anypoint Platform, encompassing the entire organization. A certified individual should have the expertise to:
Platform Optimization: Tailor the deployment of the Anypoint Platform to fit the unique needs of the organization. This involves collaborating closely with business, infrastructure, information security, and other relevant teams to ensure the platform aligns with organizational goals and requirements.
Integration Strategy: Define the role of the Anypoint Platform within the broader context of the organization’s tool and application ecosystem. This entails determining how it complements and works alongside other systems and technologies in place.
Platform Usage and Organizational Adaptation: Establish guidelines for the use of the Anypoint Platform, identifying necessary changes in organizational structure and processes to support and sustain the platform effectively.
Standards and Reusability: Provide leadership and direction in developing standards, reusable assets, and automation processes. These are essential for scaling the platform’s use and facilitating its adoption across multiple lines of business, ensuring efficiency and consistency throughout the organization.
Format
- Type of Exam: The exam is presented as a multiple-choice test, conducted online under proctored conditions. It is a closed-book format.
- Number of Questions: There are 60 questions in the exam.
- Duration: The exam has a total duration of 120 minutes, which is equivalent to 2 hours.
- Passing Score: To successfully pass the exam, a minimum score of 70% is required.
- Language: The exam is administered in English.
- Attempt Limitations: You are allowed to take the exam up to a maximum of 5 times. There is a mandatory 24-hour waiting period between each attempt.
Cost
Validity
- Expiration Timeline: The certification remains valid for a period of two years from the date you successfully pass the exam.
- Extension of Validity: To extend the validity of your certification beyond the initial two-year period, you have the option to take the MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect – Level 1 MAINTENANCE exam. Successfully passing this maintenance exam will renew your certification.
Preparation
To optimally prepare for the exam, the following resources and strategies are recommended:
ForceDigest: MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect Level 1 Practice Exam – MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect Level 1 Study Guide. These resources provide an extensive overview of the exam’s content and include practice exams that simulate the actual test, helping to familiarize you with the question format and types.
Instructor-led Training: Participate in the “Anypoint Platform Architecture: Application Networks” course. This comprehensive, instructor-led training covers all necessary topics, offering in-depth knowledge and practical applications of the concepts.
It’s crucial for candidates to thoroughly understand all the content provided in these resources and to be skilled in applying the concepts in real-world scenarios. This dual approach of theory and practice ensures a well-rounded preparation for the exam.
Topics
- Identify and differentiate between technologies typically used to implement API-led connectivity.
- Describe the role and characteristics of web APIs.
- Correctly assign APIs to tiers according to ownership, functional focus, and rate of change.
- Describe the capabilities and high-level components of Anypoint Platform.
Establishing organizational and platform foundations
- Advise on establishing a Center for Enablement (C4E) and identify KPIs to measure its success.
- Describe the high-level structure and benefits of MuleSoft Catalyst.
- Compare and contrast Identity Management and Client Management options on Anypoint Platform.
- Identify data residency of different kinds of data (payload, metrics, and others).
Designing and sharing APIs
- Identify dependencies between an API, its API specification, its implementation, and its clients.
- Describe the creation and publication of reusable API-related assets using API specifications and Anypoint Platform components.
- Identify changes to an API that would require or not require changing the major/minor/patch component of its semantic version.
- Given a specific power relationship between two Bounded Contexts, choose the most appropriate strategy for mapping between the API data models of these Bounded Contexts.
- Identify idempotent HTTP methods and HTTP-native support for optimistic concurrency.
- Recognize the important features and functionality of API Designer to design API specifications.
Designing APIs using System, Process, and Experience Layers
- Identify appropriate APIs to implement a business process and assign them to layers of API-led connectivity.
- Assign APIs to layers according to ownership, functional focus, and rate of change.
- Recommend the most appropriate approach relating the API data model of System APIs to that of their backend system based on specific requirements and organizational characteristics.
Governing APIs on Anypoint Platform
- Make appropriate use of API instances and environments in API manager taking into account the nature of the API and the underlying data and system.
- Select appropriate API policies and other components of the AP to support specific non-functional requirements (NFRs).
- Identify any change(s) required to an API specification to reflect the application of an API policy with specific characteristics.
- Select an approach to API policy enforcement based on specific preferences and constraints, including, but not limited to, API proxies/API gateways and Anypoint Service Mesh.
- Secure web APIs using API policies appropriately chosen for the API’s tier (System, Process, Experience).
- Describe in what circumstances and how to pass client ID and secret to a web API.
- Explain how to request access to an API version for an API client, and how that access is approved and revoked.
- Select appropriate API policies to enforce non-functional security constraints on web API invocations.
- Explain the relationships of Anypoint Platform, external Identity Providers, AP Business Groups, and API clients in the context of OAuth 2.0.
- Identify scenarios needing custom API policies.
Architecting and deploying API implementations
- Explain how to use auto-discovery to link a web API implementation to an API instance managed with API Manager.
- Identify requirements that call for the use of an Anypoint VPC.
- Compare and contrast options for hosting and managing Anypoint Platform runtime planes.
- Compare unit and integration tests and specify where MUnit is best employed.
- Explain options for automated build, test, and deploy of API implementations and related artifacts in a DevOps setting.
Deploying API implementations to CloudHub
- Describe the scenarios for which Object Store should be used with CloudHub.
- Select CloudHub worker sizes and configuration as appropriate.
- Given an app deployed to the CloudHub shared worker cloud in one or more regions, describe and predict its reliability and performance characteristics.
- Identify the defining differences between the CloudHub Shared and Dedicated Load Balancers.
- Compare and contrast the options for CloudHub networking in the presence of customer-owned Amazon VPCs and on-premises data centers.
- Identify and avoid single points of failure in CloudHub deployments of API implementations.
Meeting API quality goals
- Design, describe, and differentiate between scenarios that use the an object store or caching.
- Select resilience strategies that help web API clients guard against failures when invoking APIs.
- Describe when horizontal scaling of an API implementation is or is not likely to benefit response time and throughput as seen by API clients.
Monitoring and analyzing application networks
- Identify the components of Anypoint Platform that generate data for monitoring and alerting.
- Describe the metrics collected by Anypoint Platform for API invocations.
- Specify alerts to define for key metrics of API invocations for all layers of API-led connectivity.
- Specify alerts to define for Mule applications.
