Building Websites with VB.NET and DotNetNuke 3.0

Shaun Walker, Daniel N Egan, Daniel N. Egan

DotNetNukeDotNetNuke is a free, open source evolution of Microsoft's celebrated ASP.NET reference implementation, the IBuySpy Portal Solution Kit. DotNetNuke began life as a framework for constructing data-driven intranet and Internet portal applications. It has now developed into an advanced web content management system with tools to manage a dynamic and interactive data-driven website.If you work with ASP.NET and VB.NET, and want an interactive website, with forums, news and image management, where visitors can register, participate and contribute to your site, then DotNetNuke is the ideal solution for you. This book is your indispensable guide to creating content-rich websites with DotNetNuke 3.0, as quickly as possible.The first part of this book gives you a deep understanding of working with basic DotNetNuke sites, guiding you through the features and giving you the confidence to create and manage your own site. After that, you will journey to the heart of DotNetNuke, and learn about its core architecture. From there, you will learn how to customize DotNetNuke sites through skinning and creating custom modules. Enhancing your site with forums and ecommerce functionality, creating multiple sites and deploying your site round off the book. You will master each of these topics as you leap into the development of a DotNetNuke 3.0 site.

Mastering Blockchain. A deep dive into distributed ledgers, consensus protocols, smart contracts, DApps, cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, and more - Third Edition

Imran Bashir

Blockchain is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, with applications in finance, government, media, and other industries. With a legacy of providing technologists with executable insights, this new edition of Mastering Blockchain is thoroughly revised and updated to the latest blockchain research with four new chapters on consensus algorithms, Serenity (the update that will introduce Ethereum 2.0), tokenization, and enterprise blockchains.This book covers the basics, including blockchain’s technical underpinnings, cryptography and consensus protocols. It also provides you with expert knowledge on decentralization, decentralized application development on Ethereum, Bitcoin, alternative coins, smart contracts, alternative blockchains, and Hyperledger.Further, you will explore blockchain solutions beyond cryptocurrencies such as the Internet of Things with blockchain, enterprise blockchains, tokenization using blockchain, and consider the future scope of this fascinating and disruptive technology.By the end of this book, you will have gained a thorough comprehension of the various facets of blockchain and understand their potential in diverse real-world scenarios.

Test Automation Engineering Handbook. Learn and implement techniques for building robust test automation frameworks

Manikandan Sambamurthy

This book helps you build a better understanding of test automation and aids in bridging the gap between testing and test automation.The book has been divided into three sections with the first section focusing on preparing you for testing and test automation fundamentals. By the end of this section, you’ll have an understanding of some common automation terms, definitions, and roles. The second section covers the practical implementation of test automation for mobile, web, API and performance. The third section will help you understand how test automation works with CI/CD, and explore the common issues and pitfalls when executing test automation.By the end of this book, you’ll have a better understanding of automation, addressing the common pain points and best practices around test automation.

Moodle 4 Security. Enhance security, regulation, and compliance within your Moodle infrastructure

Ian Wild

Online learning platforms have revolutionized the teaching landscape, but with this comes the imperative of securing your students' private data in the digital realm. Have you taken every measure to ensure their data's security? Are you aligned with your organization’s cybersecurity standards? What about your insurer and your country’s data protection regulations?This book offers practical insights through real-world examples to ensure compliance. Equipping you with tools, techniques, and approaches, Moodle 4 Security guides you in mitigating potential threats to your Moodle platform. Dedicated chapters on understanding vulnerabilities familiarize you with the threat landscape so that you can manage your server effectively, keeping bad actors at bay and configuring Moodle for optimal user and data protection.By the end of the book, you’ll have gained a comprehensive understanding of Moodle’s security issues and how to address them. You’ll also be able to demonstrate the safety of your Moodle platform, assuring stakeholders that their data is measurably safer.

Python API Development Fundamentals. Develop a full-stack web application with Python and Flask

Jack Chan, Ray Chung, Jack Huang

Python is a flexible language that can be used for much more than just script development. By knowing the Python RESTful APIs work, you can build a powerful backend for web applications and mobile applications using Python.You'll take your first steps by building a simple API and learning how the frontend web interface can communicate with the backend. You'll also learn how to serialize and deserialize objects using the marshmallow library. Then, you'll learn how to authenticate and authorize users using Flask-JWT. You'll also learn how to enhance your APIs by adding useful features, such as email, image upload, searching, and pagination. You'll wrap up the whole book by deploying your APIs to the cloud.By the end of this book, you'll have the confidence and skill to leverage the power of RESTful APIs and Python to build efficient web applications.

Machine Learning on Kubernetes. A practical handbook for building and using a complete open source machine learning platform on Kubernetes

Faisal Masood, Ross Brigoli

MLOps is an emerging field that aims to bring repeatability, automation, and standardization of the software engineering domain to data science and machine learning engineering. By implementing MLOps with Kubernetes, data scientists, IT professionals, and data engineers can collaborate and build machine learning solutions that deliver business value for their organization.You'll begin by understanding the different components of a machine learning project. Then, you'll design and build a practical end-to-end machine learning project using open source software. As you progress, you'll understand the basics of MLOps and the value it can bring to machine learning projects. You will also gain experience in building, configuring, and using an open source, containerized machine learning platform. In later chapters, you will prepare data, build and deploy machine learning models, and automate workflow tasks using the same platform. Finally, the exercises in this book will help you get hands-on experience in Kubernetes and open source tools, such as JupyterHub, MLflow, and Airflow.By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to effectively build, train, and deploy a machine learning model using the machine learning platform you built.

ChatGPT and AI for Accountants. A practitioner's guide to harnessing the power of GenAI to revolutionize your accounting practice

Dr. Scott Dell, Dr. Mfon Akpan

In the fast-paced AI world, accounting professionals are increasingly challenged by the complexities of AI. Many struggle to integrate these advanced tools into their workflows, leading to a sense of overwhelm. ChatGPT for Accounting bridges this gap by not only simplifying AI concepts but also offering practical insights for its application in various accounting domains.This book takes you from the foundational principles of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) to its practical applications in audits, tax planning, practice management, fraud examination, financial analysis, and beyond. Each chapter equips you with essential skills, showing you how AI can revolutionize internal control systems, enhance recruitment processes, streamline marketing plans, optimize tax strategies, and boost efficiency in audits. You’ll then advance to exploring the role of AI in forensic accounting, financial analysis, managerial accounting, and corporate governance, while also addressing ethical and security implications.Concluding with a reflective outlook on the promises and challenges of AI, you’ll gain a holistic view of the future of accounting. By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge to harness the power of AI effectively and ethically, transforming your accounting practice and staying ahead in the ever-evolving landscape.

Kibana Essentials. Use the functionalities of Kibana to discover data and build attractive visualizations and dashboards for real-world scenarios

Surendra Mohan, Yuvraj Gupta, Tim Roes

Shading, Lighting, and Rendering with Blender EEVEE. Create amazing concept art 12 times faster using a real-time rendering engine

Sammie Crowder

Blender is the most important up-and-coming 3D software package in the world. EEVEE, a state-of-the-art real-time rendering engine is a fairly new addition to Blender and provides the capacity to create artwork at blazing speed, almost 12 times faster than Cycles.Lighting, Shading, and Rendering with Blender’s EEVEE provides a high-level overview of what EEVEE is capable of, then teaches users about Geometry Nodes, Rendering Techniques, using shortcuts like Kitbashing and Alphas to speed up scene creation, volumetrics, reflections, adding lights, cameras and even special effects like fire and smoke, all in EEVEE. All of this is in the context of creating actual scenes that readers will work through from start to finish. By the time a Blender Artist completes the book, they will have created three separate works that have challenged them to iterate and design with the full power of Blender’s EEVEE.

iOS 10 Programming for Beginners. Explore the latest iOS 10 and Swift 3 features

Craig Clayton

You want to build iOS applications for iPhone and iPad—but where do you start? Forget sifting through tutorials and blog posts, this is a direct route into iOS development, taking you through the basics and showing you how to put the principles into practice. With every update, iOS has become more and more developer-friendly, so take advantage of it and begin building applications that might just take the App Store by storm!Whether you’re an experienced programmer or a complete novice, this book guides you through every facet of iOS development. From Xcode and Swift—the building blocks of modern Apple development—and Playgrounds for beginners, one of the most popular features of the iOS development experience, you’ll quickly gain a solid foundation to begin venturing deeper into your development journey. For the experienced programmer, jump right in and learn the latest iOS 10 features.You’ll also learn the core elements of iOS design, from tables to tab bars, as well as more advanced topics such as gestures and animations that can give your app the edge. Find out how to manage databases, as well as integrating standard elements such as photos, GPS into your app. With further guidance on beta testing with TestFlight, you’ll quickly learn everything you need to get your project on the App Store!

3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists. Is your 3D modeling up to speed? It soon will be with this brilliant practical guide to speed modeling with 3ds Max, focusing on hard surfaces. Raise your productivity a notch and gain a new level of professionalism

Thomas Mooney

Production of 3D art is an exciting medium, but the task of modeling requires intense attention to detail, so speed and efficiency are vital. This book breaks down speed modeling workflow in 3ds Max into stages you can easily achieve, with a focus on hard surface modeling and methods you can apply to your own designs.3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists will help level up your 3D modeling skills. It focuses on hard surface modeling, and shows the range of tools and techniques in 3ds Max 2013.This book shows content creation methods aimed at 3ds Max modelers preparing to show their skill to the industry. The key feature of modeling that artists must exhibit is speediness while preserving technical accuracy. The author helps you follow set project guidelines while pushing creativity and outlines the entire workflow from concept development to exporting a game-ready model.The book begins with introductions for new users to the interface and modeling tools, and progresses to topics aimed at users already familiar with 3ds Max, who want to improve their content creation process. You'll also see ways 3ds Max content is used with other applications, like sculpting software and game editors, and learn features of speed modeling, efficient workflow, re-use of content, and tips on getting more done, more quickly.By the end of this book you will have learned key topics in modeling, ready to face professional level work with elan.

Building Machine Learning Systems with Python. Expand your Python knowledge and learn all about machine-learning libraries in this user-friendly manual. ML is the next big breakthrough in technology and this book will give you the head-start you need

Willi Richert, Luis Pedro Coelho

Machine learning, the field of building systems that learn from data, is exploding on the Web and elsewhere. Python is a wonderful language in which to develop machine learning applications. As a dynamic language, it allows for fast exploration and experimentation and an increasing number of machine learning libraries are developed for Python.Building Machine Learning system with Python shows you exactly how to find patterns through raw data. The book starts by brushing up on your Python ML knowledge and introducing libraries, and then moves on to more serious projects on datasets, Modelling, Recommendations, improving recommendations through examples and sailing through sound and image processing in detail. Using open-source tools and libraries, readers will learn how to apply methods to text, images, and sounds. You will also learn how to evaluate, compare, and choose machine learning techniques. Written for Python programmers, Building Machine Learning Systems with Python teaches you how to use open-source libraries to solve real problems with machine learning. The book is based on real-world examples that the user can build on.Readers will learn how to write programs that classify the quality of StackOverflow answers or whether a music file is Jazz or Metal. They will learn regression, which is demonstrated on how to recommend movies to users. Advanced topics such as topic modeling (finding a text's most important topics), basket analysis, and cloud computing are covered as well as many other interesting aspects.Building Machine Learning Systems with Python will give you the tools and understanding required to build your own systems, which are tailored to solve your problems.

Spring Essentials. Build mission-critical enterprise applications using Spring Framework and Aspect Oriented Programming

Shameer Kunjumohamed, Hamidreza Sattari

Spring is an open source Java application development framework to build and deploy systems and applications that run on the JVM. It is the industry standard and the most popular framework among Java developers with over two-thirds of developers using it.Spring Essentials makes learning Spring so much quicker and easier with the help of illustrations and practical examples. Starting from the core concepts of features such as inversion of Control Container and BeanFactory, we move on to a detailed look at aspect-oriented programming. We cover the breadth and depth of Spring MVC, the WebSocket technology, Spring Data, and Spring Security with various authentication and authorization mechanisms. Packed with real-world examples, you’ll get an insight into utilizing the power of Spring Expression Language in your applications for higher maintainability. You’ll also develop full-duplex real-time communication channels using WebSocket and integrate Spring with web technologies such as JSF, Struts 2, and Tapestry. At the tail end, you will build a modern SPA using EmberJS at the front end and a Spring MVC-based API at the back end.By the end of the book, you will be able to develop your own dull-fledged applications with Spring.

Enhancing Microsoft Content Management Server with ASP.NET 2.0. Use the powerful new features of ASP.NET 2.0 with your MCMS Websites

Lim Mei Ying, Spencer Harbar, Stefan Gossner

The release of Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) Service Pack 2 opens up the world of ASP.NET 2.0 to MCMS developers. Written by the masters of MCMS, this book shows you how to use the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 that everyone is talking about in your MCMS development.You will first learn how to install and configure MCMS SP2. There are two approaches to setting up a development environment for SP2: an upgrade from a previous SP1a installation or starting from scratch and building a fresh installation including SP2. Of course, both approaches are covered.You will become familiar with the MCMS Service Pack 2 development environment, and create custom Visual Studio 2005 templates to overcome some of the issues which are present with the templates shipped with MCMS SP2.After that, its time to look at some of the most exciting features of ASP.NET 2.0, and how you can make use of them in MCMS: master pages, site navigation, themes, and the membership provider model.One of the coolest features introduced with ASP.NET 2.0 is master pages, which allow developers to enforce common layout and behaviour across pages within an application. You will learn about the benefits of using master pages and see a step-by-step guide for implementing them in your MCMS applications, where they become master templates!ASP.NET 2.0 introduces a whole new way of implementing site navigation, driven by site maps. By programmatically adding channels and postings to a site map you will see how to smoothly integrate these controls to any MCMS site.To customize the look of your site, we will see how a common look and feel can be applied efficiently to a MCMS site by using ASP.NET 2.0 themes. An essential customization required for themes to work correctly in an MCMS site is a must-read feature of this chapter.MCMS has its own role based authorization and user management system which cannot be extended. However, the new ASP.NET 2.0 Membership Provider Model and the shipped controls can be used within MCMS applications to improve the implementation of Forms Authentication and provide a more elegant solution for authenticating against an external store.A collection of tips and tricks round off the book, including using the Provider Model design pattern to ease migration to Office SharePoint Portal Server

JavaScript for .NET Developers. Developing for the modern web

Ovais Mehboob Ahmed Khan

If you want to improve responsiveness or the UX in your ASP.NET applications, JavaScript can be a life saver. In an age where server-side operations have shifted to the client, being able to handle JavaScript with confidence and fluency is vital for ASP.NET developers. There’s no point trying to fight it, so start learning with this book. Make sure your projects exceed user expectations.Begin by getting stuck into the basics of JavaScript, and explore the language in the context of ASP.NET Core. You’ll then find out how to put the principles into practice, as you learn how to develop a basic ASP.NET application using Angular 2 and TypeScript. You’ll also develop essential skills required to develop responsive apps, with a little help from AJAX, ensuring that you’re building projects that can be easily accessed across different devices. With guidance on Node.js and some neat techniques to test and debug a range of JavaScript libraries in Visual Studio, you’ll soon be well on your way to combining JavaScript with ASP.NET in a way that’s capable of meeting the challenges of modern web development head-on.

Designing Microservices Platforms with NATS. A modern approach to designing and implementing scalable microservices platforms with NATS messaging

Chanaka Fernando

Building a scalable microservices platform that caters to business demands is critical to the success of that platform. In a microservices architecture, inter-service communication becomes a bottleneck when the platform scales. This book provides a reference architecture along with a practical example of how to implement it for building microservices-based platforms with NATS as the messaging backbone for inter-service communication.In Designing Microservices Platforms with NATS, you’ll learn how to build a scalable and manageable microservices platform with NATS. The book starts by introducing concepts relating to microservices architecture, inter-service communication, messaging backbones, and the basics of NATS messaging. You’ll be introduced to a reference architecture that uses these concepts to build a scalable microservices platform and guided through its implementation. Later, the book touches on important aspects of platform securing and monitoring with the help of the reference implementation. Finally, the book concludes with a chapter on best practices to follow when integrating with existing platforms and the future direction of microservices architecture and NATS messaging as a whole.By the end of this microservices book, you’ll have developed the skills to design and implement microservices platforms with NATS.