TensorFlow Reinforcement Learning Quick Start Guide. Get up and running with training and deploying intelligent, self-learning agents using Python

Kaushik Balakrishnan

Advances in reinforcement learning algorithms have made it possible to use them for optimal control in several different industrial applications. With this book, you will apply Reinforcement Learning to a range of problems, from computer games to autonomous driving.The book starts by introducing you to essential Reinforcement Learning concepts such as agents, environments, rewards, and advantage functions. You will also master the distinctions between on-policy and off-policy algorithms, as well as model-free and model-based algorithms. You will also learn about several Reinforcement Learning algorithms, such as SARSA, Deep Q-Networks (DQN), Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients (DDPG), Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C), Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). The book will also show you how to code these algorithms in TensorFlow and Python and apply them to solve computer games from OpenAI Gym. Finally, you will also learn how to train a car to drive autonomously in the Torcs racing car simulator.By the end of the book, you will be able to design, build, train, and evaluate feed-forward neural networks and convolutional neural networks. You will also have mastered coding state-of-the-art algorithms and also training agents for various control problems.

Architectural Patterns. Uncover essential patterns in the most indispensable realm of enterprise architecture

Anupama Murali, Harihara Subramanian J, Pethuru Raj Chelliah

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is typically an aggregate of the business, application, data, and infrastructure architectures of any forward-looking enterprise. Due to constant changes and rising complexities in the business and technology landscapes, producing sophisticated architectures is on the rise. Architectural patterns are gaining a lot of attention these days.The book is divided in three modules. You'll learn about the patterns associated with object-oriented, component-based, client-server, and cloud architectures. The second module covers Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) patterns and how they are architected using various tools and patterns. You will come across patterns for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Event-Driven Architecture (EDA), Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA), big data analytics architecture, and Microservices Architecture (MSA). The final module talks about advanced topics such as Docker containers, high performance, and reliable application architectures. The key takeaways include understanding what architectures are, why they're used, and how and where architecture, design, and integration patterns are being leveraged to build better and bigger systems.

Learning ServiceNow. Administration and development on the Now platform, for powerful IT automation - Second Edition

Tim Woodruff

This book is an updated version of LearningServiceNow, that will cover the new andupdated features of the ServiceNow platform.It will show you how to put importantServiceNow features to work in the realworld, while introducing key concepts viaexamples of managing and automating ITservices. It'll help you build a solid foundationof knowledge, and will demonstrate how toeffectively implement and configure moduleswithin ServiceNow. We'll show you how toconfigure and administer your instance,and then move on to building strong userinterfaces and creating powerful workflows.We also cover other key elements ofServiceNow, such as notifications, security,reporting, and custom development. Youwill learn how to improve and automate yourbusiness' workflow and processes. By the endof this book, you will be able to successfullyconfigure and manage ServiceNow like a pro.

Hands-On Software Engineering with Python. Move beyond basic programming and construct reliable and efficient software with complex code

Brian Allbee

Software Engineering is about more than just writing code—it includes a host of soft skills that apply to almost any development effort, no matter what the language, development methodology, or scope of the project. Being a senior developer all but requires awareness of how those skills, along with their expected technical counterparts, mesh together through a project's life cycle. This book walks you through that discovery by going over the entire life cycle of a multi-tier system and its related software projects. You'll see what happens before any development takes place, and what impact the decisions and designs made at each step have on the development process. The development of the entire project, over the course of several iterations based on real-world Agile iterations, will be executed, sometimes starting from nothing, in one of the fastest growing languages in the world—Python. Application of practices in Python will be laid out, along with a number of Python-specific capabilities that are often overlooked. Finally, the book will implement a high-performance computing solution, from first principles through complete foundation.

Mastering AWS Lambda. Learn how to build and deploy serverless applications

Yohan Wadia, Udita Gupta

AWS is recognized as one of the biggest market leaders for cloud computing and why not? It has evolved a lot since the time it started out by providing just basic services such as EC2 and S3 and today; they go all the way from IoT to Machine Learning, Image recognition, Chatbot Frameworks, and much more! One of those recent services that is also gaining a lot of traction is AWS Lambda! Although seemingly simple and easy to use, Lambda is a highly effective and scalable compute service that provides developers with a powerful platform to design and develop Serverless event-driven systems and applications. The book begins with a high-level introduction into the world of Serverless computing and its advantages and use cases, followed by a deep dive into AWS Lambda! You’ll learn what services AWS Lambda provides to developers; how to design, write, and test Lambda functions; as well as monitor and troubleshoot them. The book is designed and accompanied with a vast variety of real-world examples, use cases, and code samples that will enable you to get started on your Serverless applications quickly. By the end of the book, you will have gained all the skills required to work with AWS Lambda services!

Getting Started with Kubernetes. Orchestrate and manage large-scale Docker deployments - Second Edition

Jonathan Baier

Kubernetes has continued to grow and achieve broad adoption across various industries, helping you to orchestrate and automate container deployments on a massive scale.This book will give you a complete understanding of Kubernetes and how to get a cluster up and running. You will develop an understanding of the installation and configuration process. The book will then focus on the core Kubernetes constructs such as pods, services, replica sets, replication controllers, and labels. You will also understand how cluster level networking is done in Kubernetes. The book will also show you how to manage deployments and perform updates with minimal downtime. Additionally, you will learn about operational aspects of Kubernetes such as monitoring and logging. Advanced concepts such as container security and cluster federation will also be covered. Finally, you will learn about the wider Kubernetes ecosystem with OCP, CoreOS, and Tectonic and explore the third-party extensions and tools that can be used with Kubernetes.By the end of the book, you will have a complete understanding of the Kubernetes platform and will start deploying applications on it.

Implementing AWS: Design, Build, and Manage your Infrastructure. Leverage AWS features to build highly secure, fault-tolerant, and scalable cloud environments

Yohan Wadia, Rowan Udell, Lucas Chan, Udita Gupta

With this Learning Path, you’ll explore techniques to easily manage applications on the AWS cloud. You’ll begin with an introduction to serverless computing, its advantages, and the fundamentals of AWS. The following chapters will guide you on how to manage multiple accounts by setting up consolidated billing, enhancing your application delivery skills, with the latest AWS services such as CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline to provide continuous delivery and deployment, while also securing and monitoring your environment's workflow. It’ll also add to your understanding of the services AWS Lambda provides to developers. To refine your skills further, it demonstrates how to design, write, test, monitor, and troubleshoot Lambda functions. By the end of this Learning Path, you’ll be able to create a highly secure, fault-tolerant, and scalable environment for your applications.This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products:• AWS Administration: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition by Yohan Wadia• AWS Administration Cookbook by Rowan Udell, Lucas Chan• Mastering AWS Lambda by Yohan Wadia, Udita Gupta

ESP8266 Robotics Projects. DIY Wi-Fi controlled robots

Pradeeka Seneviratne

The ESP8266 Wi-Fi module is a self-contained SOC with an integrated TCP/IP protocol stack and can give any microcontroller access to your Wi-Fi network. It has a powerful processing and storage capability and also supports application hosting and Wi-Fi networking. This book is all about robotics projects based on the original ESP8266 microcontroller board and some variants of ESP8266 boards. It starts by showing all the necessary things that you need to build your development environment with basic hardware and software components. The book uses the original ESP8266 board and some variants such as the Adafruit HUZZAH ESP8266 and the Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 . You will learn how to use different type of chassis kits, motors, motor drivers, power supplies, distribution boards, sensors, and actuators to build robotics projects that can be controlled via Wi-Fi. In addition, you will learn how to use line sensors, the ArduiCam, Wii Remote, wheel encoders, and the Gripper kit to build more specialized robots.By the end of this book, you will have built a Wi-Fi control robot using ESP8266.

Windows Server 2016 Administration Fundamentals. Deploy, set up, and deliver network services with Windows Server while preparing for the MTA 98-365 exam and pass it with ease

Bekim Dauti

Windows Server 2016 is the server operating system developed by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems, developed concurrently with Windows 10. This book is designed to get you started with Windows Server 2016. It will prepare you for your MTA 98-365 exam. With step-by-step instructions driven by targeted, easy-to-understand graphics, you will be able to understand the roles, features, functions, and quirks of Windows Server 2016.The book begins with the basics of Windows Server 2016, which includes the installation process and basic configuration. You will then move on to roles and features such as Active Directory, Hyper-V, Remote Access, Storage, and Printer. With the help of real-world examples, you will get to grips with the fundamentals of Windows Server 2016, which will help you solve difficult tasks the easy way. Later, the book also shows you maintenance and troubleshooting tasks, where with the help of best practices you will be able to manage Windows Server 2016 with ease. Each chapter ends with a questionnaire to ensure you make the best use of the content provided. By the end of this book, you will have the knowledge required to administer and manage Windows Server environments.

Teradata Cookbook. Over 85 recipes to implement efficient data warehousing solutions

Abhinav Khandelwal, Rajsekhar Bhamidipati

Teradata is an enterprise software company that develops and sells its eponymous relational database management system (RDBMS), which is considered to be a leading data warehousing solutions and provides data management solutions for analytics. This book will help you get all the practical information you need for the creation and implementation of your data warehousing solution using Teradata.The book begins with recipes on quickly setting up a development environment so you can work with different types of data structuring and manipulation function. You will tackle all problems related to efficient querying, stored procedure searching, and navigation techniques. Additionally, you’ll master various administrative tasks such as user and security management, workload management, high availability, performance tuning, and monitoring.This book is designed to take you through the best practices of performing the real daily tasks of a Teradata DBA, and will help you tackle any problem you might encounter in the process.

Hands-On High Performance Programming with Qt 5

Mark Krajewski

Achieving efficient code through performance tuning is one of the key challenges faced by many programmers. This book looks at Qt programming from a performance perspective. You'll explore the performance problems encountered when using the Qt framework and means and ways to resolve them and optimize performance.   The book highlights performance improvements and new features released in Qt 5.9, Qt 5.11, and 5.12 (LTE). You'll master general computer performance best practices and tools, which can help you identify the reasons behind low performance, and the most common performance pitfalls experienced when using the Qt framework. In the following chapters, you'll explore multithreading and asynchronous programming with C++ and Qt and learn the importance and efficient use of data structures. You'll also get the opportunity to work through techniques such as memory management and design guidelines, which are essential to improve application performance. Comprehensive sections that cover all these concepts will prepare you for gaining hands-on experience of some of Qt's most exciting application fields - the mobile and embedded development domains.   By the end of this book, you'll be ready to build Qt applications that are more efficient, concurrent, and performance-oriented in nature  

Hands-On Java Deep Learning for Computer Vision. Implement machine learning and neural network methodologies to perform computer vision-related tasks

Klevis Ramo

Although machine learning is an exciting world to explore, you may feel confused by all of its theoretical aspects. As a Java developer, you will be used to telling the computer exactly what to do, instead of being shown how data is generated; this causes many developers to struggle to adapt to machine learning.The goal of this book is to walk you through the process of efficiently training machine learning and deep learning models for Computer Vision using the most up-to-date techniques. The book is designed to familiarize you with neural networks, enabling you to train them efficiently, customize existing state-of-the-art architectures, build real-world Java applications, and get great results in a short space of time. You will build real-world Computer Vision applications, ranging from a simple Java handwritten digit recognition model to real-time Java autonomous car driving systems and face recognition models.By the end of this book, you will have mastered the best practices and modern techniques needed to build advanced Computer Vision Java applications and achieve production-grade accuracy.

Mastering Matplotlib 2.x. Effective Data Visualization techniques with Python

Benjamin Walter Keller

In this book, you’ll get hands-on with customizing your data plots with the help of Matplotlib. You’ll start with customizing plots, making a handful of special-purpose plots, and building 3D plots. You’ll explore non-trivial layouts, Pylab customization, and more about tile configuration. You’ll be able to add text, put lines in plots, and also handle polygons, shapes, and annotations. Non-Cartesian and vector plots are exciting to construct, and you’ll explore them further in this book. You’ll delve into niche plots and visualize ordinal and tabular data. In this book, you’ll be exploring 3D plotting, one of the best features when it comes to 3D data visualization, along with Jupyter Notebook, widgets, and creating movies for enhanced data representation. Geospatial plotting will also be explored. Finally, you’ll learn how to create interactive plots with the help of Jupyter.Learn expert techniques for effective data visualization using Matplotlib 3 and Python with our latest offering -- Matplotlib 3.0 Cookbook

Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook. Solutions to help you implement, configure, and customize your business applications with Salesforce CRM and Lightning Experience - Second Edition

Paul Goodey

Salesforce CRM is a market-leading customer relationship management (CRM) application that is accessed over the internet. This application greatly enhances a company's sales performance, improves customer satisfaction, and provides a robust customer relationship management system for an organization.Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook, Second Edition enables you to instantly extend and unleash the power of Salesforce CRM and its Lightning Experience framework. It provides clear, comprehensive instructions along with detailed screenshots and code. Whether you are looking for solutions to enhance the core features, such as data management, process automation, data validation, and home page administration, or are looking for ideas on advanced customization techniques, this book will provide you with immediate, practical, and exciting real-world recipes. This book guides you through interesting topics spanning a variety of functional areas. Recipes are provided that allow you to configure, build and extend the capability of Salesforce CRM using the Lightning Experience framework.

Implementing Azure Cloud Design Patterns. Implement efficient design patterns for data management, high availability, monitoring and other popular patterns on your Azure Cloud

Oliver Michalski, Stefano Demiliani

A well designed cloud infrastructure covers factors such as consistency, maintenance, simplified administration and development, and reusability. Hence it is important to choose the right architectural pattern as it has a huge impact on the quality of cloud-hosted services. This book covers all Azure design patterns and functionalities to help you build your cloud infrastructure so it fits your system requirements.This book initially covers design patterns that are focused on factors such as availability and data management/monitoring. Then the focus shifts to complex design patterns such as multitasking, improving scalability, valet keys, and so on, with practical use cases. The book also supplies best practices to improve the security and performance of your cloud. By the end of this book, you will thoroughly be familiar with the different design and architectural patterns available with Windows Azure and capable of choosing the best pattern for your system.

Hands-On System Programming with C++. Build performant and concurrent Unix and Linux systems with C++17

Dr. Rian Quinn

C++ is a general-purpose programming language with a bias toward system programming as it provides ready access to hardware-level resources, efficient compilation, and a versatile approach to higher-level abstractions.This book will help you understand the benefits of system programming with C++17. You will gain a firm understanding of various C, C++, and POSIX standards, as well as their respective system types for both C++ and POSIX. After a brief refresher on C++, Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII), and the new C++ Guideline Support Library (GSL), you will learn to program Linux and Unix systems along with process management. As you progress through the chapters, you will become acquainted with C++'s support for IO. You will then study various memory management methods, including a chapter on allocators and how they benefit system programming. You will also explore how to program file input and output and learn about POSIX sockets. This book will help you get to grips with safely setting up a UDP and TCP server/client.Finally, you will be guided through Unix time interfaces, multithreading, and error handling with C++ exceptions. By the end of this book, you will be comfortable with using C++ to program high-quality systems.