Publisher: Packt Publishing
Founded in 2004 in Birmingham, UK, Packt's mission is to help the world put software to work in new ways, through the delivery of effective learning and information services to IT professionals. Working towards that vision, we have published over 6,500 books and videos so far, providing IT professionals with the actionable knowledge they need to get the job done - whether that's specific learning on an emerging technology or optimizing key skills in more established tools. As part of our mission, we have also awarded over $1,000,000 through our Open Source Project Royalty scheme, helping numerous projects become household names along the way.
273
Ebook

Learning C# 7 By Developing Games with Unity 2017. Learn C# Programming by building fun and interactive games with Unity - Third Edition

Micael DaGraça

Do you want to learn C# programming by creating fun and interactive games using the latest Unity 2017 platform? If so, look no further; this is the right book for you. Get started with programming C# so you can create 2D and 3D games in Unity. We will walk you through the basics to get you started with C# 7 and its latest features. Then, explore the use of C# 7 and its latest functional programming capabilities to create amazing games with Unity 2017.You will create your first C# script for Unity, add objects into it, and learn how to create game elements with it. Work with the latest functional programming features of C# and leverage them for great game scripting.Throughout the book, you will learn to use the new Unity 2017 2D tool set and create an interactive 2D game with it. You will make enemies appear to challenge your player, and discover some optimization techniques for great game performance. At the end, you will learn how to transform a 2D game into 3D, and you will be able to skill up to become a pro C# programmer with Unity 2017!

274
Ebook

Modern Big Data Processing with Hadoop. Expert techniques for architecting end-to-end big data solutions to get valuable insights

V Naresh Kumar, Prashant Shindgikar

The complex structure of data these days requires sophisticated solutions for data transformation, to make the information more accessible to the users.This book empowers you to build such solutions with relative ease with the help of Apache Hadoop, along with a host of other Big Data tools.This book will give you a complete understanding of the data lifecycle management with Hadoop, followed by modeling of structured and unstructured data in Hadoop. It will also show you how to design real-time streaming pipelines by leveraging tools such as Apache Spark, and build efficient enterprise search solutions using Elasticsearch. You will learn to build enterprise-grade analytics solutions on Hadoop, and how to visualize your data using tools such as Apache Superset. This book also covers techniques for deploying your Big Data solutions on the cloud Apache Ambari, as well as expert techniques for managing and administering your Hadoop cluster. By the end of this book, you will have all the knowledge you need to build expert Big Data systems.

275
Ebook

Learning Docker. Build, ship, and scale faster - Second Edition

Vinod Singh, Pethuru Raj, Jeeva S. Chelladhurai

Docker is an open source containerization engine that offers a simple and faster way for developing and running software. Docker containers wrap software in a complete filesystem that contains everything it needs to run, enabling any application to be run anywhere – this flexibily and portabily means that you can run apps in the cloud, on virtual machines, or on dedicated servers.This book will give you a tour of the new features of Docker and help you get started with Docker by building and deploying a simple application. It will walk you through the commands required to manage Docker images and containers. You’ll be shown how to download new images, run containers, list the containers running on the Docker host, and kill them. You’ll learn how to leverage Docker’s volumes feature to share data between the Docker host and its containers – this data management feature is also useful for persistent data. This book also covers how to orchestrate containers using Docker compose, debug containers, and secure containers using the AppArmor and SELinux security modules.

276
Ebook

ArcPy and ArcGIS. Automating ArcGIS for Desktop and ArcGIS Online with Python - Second Edition

Silas Toms, Dara OBeirne

ArcGIS allows for complex analyses of geographic information. The ArcPy module is used to script these ArcGIS analyses, providing a productive way to perform geo-analyses and automate map production.The second edition of the book focuses on new Python tools, such as the ArcGIS API for Python. Using Python, this book will guide you from basic Python scripting to advanced ArcPy script tools.This book starts off with setting up your Python environment for ArcGIS automation. Then you will learn how to output maps using ArcPy in MXD and update feature class in a geodatabase using arcpy and ArcGIS Online. Next, you will be introduced to ArcREST library followed by examples on querying, updating and manipulating ArcGIS Online feature services. Further, you will be enabling your scripts in the browser and directly interacting with ArcGIS Online using Jupyter notebook. Finally, you can learn ways to use of ArcPy to control ArcGIS Enterprise and explore topics on deployments, data quality assurances, data updates, version control, and editing safeguards.By the end of the book, you will be equipped with the knowledge required to create automated analysis with administration reducing the time-consuming nature of GIS.

277
Ebook

Learning PowerShell DSC. Automate deployment and configuration of your servers - Second Edition

James Pogran

The main goal of this book is to teach you to configure, deploy, and manage your system using the new features of PowerShell v5/v6 DSC.This book begins with the basics of PowerShell Desired State Configuration, covering its architecture and components. It familiarizes you with the set of Windows PowerShell language extensions and new Windows PowerShell commands that make up DSC. Then it helps you create DSC custom resources and work with DSC configurations with the help of practical examples. Finally, it describes how to deploy configuration data using PowerShell DSC. Throughout this book, we will be focusing on concepts such as building configurations with parameters, the local configuration manager, and testing and restoring configurations using PowerShell DSC.By the end of the book, you will be able to deploy a real-world application end-to-end and will be familiar enough with the powerful Desired State Configuration platform to achieve continuous delivery and efficiently and easily manage and deploy data for systems.

278
Ebook

Learn Unity ML-Agents - Fundamentals of Unity Machine Learning. Incorporate new powerful ML algorithms such as Deep Reinforcement Learning for games

Micheal Lanham

Unity Machine Learning agents allow researchers and developers to create games and simulations using the Unity Editor, which serves as an environment where intelligent agents can be trained with machine learning methods through a simple-to-use Python API.This book takes you from the basics of Reinforcement and Q Learning to building Deep Recurrent Q-Network agents that cooperate or compete in a multi-agent ecosystem. You will start with the basics of Reinforcement Learning and how to apply it to problems. Then you will learn how to build self-learning advanced neural networks with Python and Keras/TensorFlow. From there you move o n to more advanced training scenarios where you will learn further innovative ways to train your network with A3C, imitation, and curriculum learning models. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to build more complex environments by building a cooperative and competitive multi-agent ecosystem.

279
Ebook

Architecting Modern Java EE Applications. Designing lightweight, business-oriented enterprise applications in the age of cloud, containers, and Java EE 8

Sebastian Daschner

Java EE 8 brings with it a load of features, mainly targeting newer architectures such as microservices, modernized security APIs, and cloud deployments. This book will teach you to design and develop modern, business-oriented applications using Java EE 8. It shows how to structure systems and applications, and how design patterns and Domain Driven Design aspects are realized in the age of Java EE 8. You will learn about the concepts and principles behind Java EE applications, and how to effect communication, persistence, technical and cross-cutting concerns, and asynchronous behavior.This book covers Continuous Delivery, DevOps, infrastructure-as-code, containers, container orchestration technologies, such as Docker and Kubernetes, and why and especially how Java EE fits into this world. It also covers the requirements behind containerized, zero-dependency applications and how modern Java EE application servers support these approaches. You will also learn about automated, fast, and reliable software tests, in different test levels, scopes, and test technologies. This book covers the prerequisites and challenges of distributed systems that lead to microservice, shared-nothing architectures. The challenges and solutions of consistency versus scalability will further lead us to event sourcing, event-driven architectures, and the CQRS principle. This book also includes the nuts and bolts of application performance as well as how to realize resilience, logging, monitoring and tracing in a modern enterprise world. Last but not least the demands of securing enterprise systems are covered.By the end, you will understand the ins and outs of Java EE so that you can make critical design decisions that not only live up to, but also surpass your clients' expectations.

280
Ebook

Nginx HTTP Server. Harness the power of Nginx to make the most of your infrastructure and serve pages faster than ever before - Fourth Edition

Martin Bjerretoft Fjordvald, Clement Nedelcu

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high-speed internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity.This book is a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, this complete direct reference will be indispensable at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes. This book mainly targets the most recent version of Nginx (1.13.2) and focuses on all the new additions and improvements, such as support for HTTP/2, improved dynamic modules, security enhancements, and support for multiple SSL certificates. This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules so that it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.

281
Ebook

Python Deep Learning Projects. 9 projects demystifying neural network and deep learning models for building intelligent systems

Matthew Lamons, Rahul Kumar, Abhishek Nagaraja

Deep learning has been gradually revolutionizing every field of artificial intelligence, making application development easier.Python Deep Learning Projects imparts all the knowledge needed to implement complex deep learning projects in the field of computational linguistics and computer vision. Each of these projects is unique, helping you progressively master the subject. You’ll learn how to implement a text classifier system using a recurrent neural network (RNN) model and optimize it to understand the shortcomings you might experience while implementing a simple deep learning system.Similarly, you’ll discover how to develop various projects, including word vector representation, open domain question answering, and building chatbots using seq-to-seq models and language modeling. In addition to this, you’ll cover advanced concepts, such as regularization, gradient clipping, gradient normalization, and bidirectional RNNs, through a series of engaging projects.By the end of this book, you will have gained knowledge to develop your own deep learning systems in a straightforward way and in an efficient way

282
Ebook

Mastering Concurrency in Python. Create faster programs using concurrency, asynchronous, multithreading, and parallel programming

Quan Nguyen

Python is one of the most popular programming languages, with numerous libraries and frameworks that facilitate high-performance computing. Concurrency and parallelism in Python are essential when it comes to multiprocessing and multithreading; they behave differently, but their common aim is to reduce the execution time. This book serves as a comprehensive introduction to various advanced concepts in concurrent engineering and programming.Mastering Concurrency in Python starts by introducing the concepts and principles in concurrency, right from Amdahl's Law to multithreading programming, followed by elucidating multiprocessing programming, web scraping, and asynchronous I/O, together with common problems that engineers and programmers face in concurrent programming. Next, the book covers a number of advanced concepts in Python concurrency and how they interact with the Python ecosystem, including the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL). Finally, you'll learn how to solve real-world concurrency problems through examples.By the end of the book, you will have gained extensive theoretical knowledge of concurrency and the ways in which concurrency is supported by the Python language

283
Ebook

Learning ASP.NET Core 2.0. Build modern web apps with ASP.NET Core 2.0, MVC, and EF Core 2

Jason De Oliveira, Michel Bruchet

The ability to develop web applications that are highly efficient but also easy to maintain has become imperative to many businesses. ASP.NET Core 2.0 is an open source framework from Microsoft, which makes it easy to build cross-platform web applications that are modern and dynamic. This book will take you through all of the essential concepts in ASP.NET Core 2.0, so you can learn how to build powerful web applications. The book starts with a brief introduction to the ASP.NET Core framework and the improvements made in the latest release, ASP.NET Core 2.0. You will then build, test, and debug your first web application very quickly. Once you understand the basic structure of ASP.NET Core 2.0 web applications, you'll dive deeper into more complex concepts and scenarios. Moving on, we'll explain how to take advantage of widely used frameworks such as Model View Controller and Entity Framework Core 2 and you'll learn how to secure your applications. Finally, we'll show you how to deploy and monitor your applications using Azure, AWS, and Docker. After reading the book, you'll be able to develop efficient and robust web applications in ASP.NET Core 2.0 that have high levels of customer satisfaction and adoption.

284
Ebook

Android Development with Kotlin. Enhance your skills for Android development using Kotlin

Igor Wojda, Marcin Moskala

Nowadays, improved application development does not just mean building better performing applications. It has become crucial to find improved ways of writing code. Kotlin is a language that helps developers build amazing Android applications easily and effectively. This book discusses Kotlin features in context of Android development. It demonstrates how common examples that are typical for Android development, can be simplified using Kotlin. It also shows all the benefits, improvements and new possibilities provided by this language.The book is divided in three modules that show the power of Kotlin and teach you how to use it properly. Each module present features in different levels of advancement. The first module covers Kotlin basics. This module will lay a firm foundation for the rest of the chapters so you are able to read and understand most of the Kotlin code. The next module dives deeper into the building blocks of Kotlin, such as functions, classes, and function types. You will learn how Kotlin brings many improvements to the table by improving common Java concepts and decreasing code verbosity. The last module presents features that are not present in Java. You will learn how certain tasks can be achieved in simpler ways thanks to Kotlin.Through the book, you will learn how to use Kotlin for Android development. You will get to know and understand most important Kotlin features, and how they can be used. You will be ready to start your own adventure with Android development with Kotlin.

285
Ebook

Learn Python in 7 Days. Begin your journey with Python

Mohit Raj, Bhaskar N. Das

Python is a great language to get started in the world of programming and application development. This book will help you to take your skills to the next level having a good knowledge of the fundamentals of Python.We begin with the absolute foundation, covering the basic syntax, type variables and operators. We'll then move on to concepts like statements, arrays, operators, string processing and I/O handling. You’ll be able to learn how to operate tuples and understand the functions and methods of lists. We’ll help you develop a deep understanding of list and tuples and learn python dictionary. As you progress through the book, you’ll learn about function parameters and how to use control statements with the loop. You’ll further learn how to create modules and packages, storing of data as well as handling errors. We later dive into advanced level concepts such as Python collections and how to use class, methods, objects in python.By the end of this book, you will be able to take your skills to the next level having a good knowledge of the fundamentals of Python.

286
Ebook

Zabbix 4 Network Monitoring. Monitor the performance of your network devices and applications using the all-new Zabbix 4.0 - Third Edition

Patrik Uytterhoeven, Rihards Olups

Zabbix 4 Network Monitoring is the perfect starting point for monitoring the performance of your network devices and applications with Zabbix. Even if you’ve never used a monitoring solution before, this book will get you up and running quickly. You’ll learn to monitor more sophisticated operations with ease and soon feel in complete control of your network, ready to meet any challenges you might face.Starting with the installation, you will discover the new features in Zabbix 4.0. You will then get to grips with native Zabbix agents and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) devices. You will also explore Zabbix's integrated functionality for monitoring Java application servers and VMware. This book also covers notifications, permission management, system maintenance, and troubleshooting, so you can be confident that every potential challenge and task is under your control. If you're working with larger environments, you'll also be able to find out more about distributed data collection using Zabbix proxies. Once you're confident and ready to put these concepts into practice, you will understand how to optimize and improve performance. Troubleshooting network issues is vital for anyone working with Zabbix, so the book also helps you work through any technical snags and glitches you might face.By the end of this book, you will have learned more advanced techniques to fine-tune your system and make sure it is in a healthy state.

287
Ebook

QGIS Python Programming Cookbook. Automating geospatial development - Second Edition

Joel Lawhead

QGIS is a desktop geographic information system that facilitates data viewing, editing, and analysis. Paired with the most efficient scripting language—Python, we can write effective scripts that extend the core functionality of QGIS. Based on version QGIS 2.18, this book will teach you how to write Python code that works with spatial data to automate geoprocessing tasks in QGIS. It will cover topics such as querying and editing vector data and using raster data. You will also learn to create, edit, and optimize a vector layer for faster queries, reproject a vector layer, reduce the number of vertices in a vector layer without losing critical data, and convert a raster to a vector. Following this, you will work through recipes that will help you compose static maps, create heavily customized maps, and add specialized labels and annotations. As well as this, we’ll also share a few tips and tricks based on different aspects of QGIS.

288
Ebook

Neural Network Programming with Tensorflow. Unleash the power of TensorFlow to train efficient neural networks

Manpreet Singh Ghotra, Rajdeep Dua

If you're aware of the buzz surrounding the terms such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, or deep learning, you might know what neural networks are. Ever wondered how they help in solving complex computational problem efficiently, or how to train efficient neural networks? This book will teach you just that.You will start by getting a quick overview of the popular TensorFlow library and how it is used to train different neural networks. You will get a thorough understanding of the fundamentals and basic math for neural networks and why TensorFlow is a popular choice Then, you will proceed to implement a simple feed forward neural network. Next you will master optimization techniques and algorithms for neural networks using TensorFlow. Further, you will learn to implement some more complex types of neural networks such as convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and Deep Belief Networks. In the course of the book, you will be working on real-world datasets to get a hands-on understanding of neural network programming. You will also get to train generative models and will learn the applications of autoencoders.By the end of this book, you will have a fair understanding of how you can leverage the power of TensorFlow to train neural networks of varying complexities, without any hassle. While you are learning about various neural network implementations you will learn the underlying mathematics and linear algebra and how they map to the appropriate TensorFlow constructs.