OTCA question bank coverage by exam domain
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The GoldenKube OTCA bank is small and spread almost evenly across its four domains, which leaves The OpenTelemetry API and SDK, the dominant exam domain, clearly under-covered. Every question is explained. The table below shows the live counts per domain and the gap between each bank share and the published weight.
| Official domain | Weight | Questions | Share | Gap (pts) | Explained | Topic pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fundamentals of Observability | 18% | 10 | 24% | +5.8 | 10 | 1 |
| The OpenTelemetry API and SDK | 46% | 12 | 29% | −17.4 | 12 | 1 |
| The OpenTelemetry Collector | 26% | 9 | 21% | −4.6 | 9 | 1 |
| Maintaining and Debugging Observability Pipelines | 10% | 11 | 26% | +16.2 | 11 | 1 |
| Whole bank | 100% | 42 | 100% | — | 42 | 4 |
Counts read from the live OTCA bank. Weights as published on the official certification page, checked .
What the table measures
Each row is one official OTCA exam domain, in the order and with the weight the Linux Foundation publishes. The question count is read from the GoldenKube OTCA bank when the page is served, so it always matches what you can practise today. Share is that count divided by the whole bank, and the gap column is the share minus the official weight, in percentage points: a positive gap means the bank has more questions on that domain than the exam weight alone would suggest, a negative gap means fewer. Explained counts the questions that come with a written explanation, and topic pages counts the public topic pages built from that domain.
Some bank sets use their own domain names; those are mapped to the official domain they cover. Mixed practice sets that span several domains are not forced into one row and are listed separately, which is why the official rows can add up to less than the whole bank.
The weights describe the exam, not this bank. A gap is not an error in the exam or in your preparation, it only tells you where practising here gives you more or less material than the exam is likely to ask about.
Where the OTCA bank leans
The OpenTelemetry API and SDK carries by far the largest exam weight but gets roughly the same number of questions as the other domains, so it has the largest negative gap. The OpenTelemetry Collector is under its weight too. Maintaining and Debugging Observability Pipelines, the lightest exam domain, is the most over-represented, and Fundamentals of Observability is also above its weight. With a bank this small, every question moves a share by several points, so the direction of each gap matters more than its exact size.
The bank calls the first domain Observability Fundamentals; it is mapped to the official Fundamentals of Observability row.
How to use this when you practise OTCA
Use the OTCA bank to check vocabulary, not to cover the exam. Spend most of your study time on the API and SDK: tracer and meter providers, spans and their context, metric instruments, resources, propagators, exporters and sampling, with the OpenTelemetry specification and one language SDK open. Then practise Collector configuration with receivers, processors, exporters and pipelines. The pipeline debugging questions here are useful, but the exam gives that domain little room.
Sources
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