OpenCV 4 for Secret Agents. Use OpenCV 4 in secret projects to classify cats, reveal the unseen, and react to rogue drivers - Second Edition

Joseph Howse

OpenCV 4 is a collection of image processing functions and computer vision algorithms. It is open source, supports many programming languages and platforms, and is fast enough for many real-time applications. With this handy library, you’ll be able to build a variety of impressive gadgets.OpenCV 4 for Secret Agents features a broad selection of projects based on computer vision, machine learning, and several application frameworks. To enable you to build apps for diverse desktop systems and Raspberry Pi, the book supports multiple Python versions, from 2.7 to 3.7. For Android app development, the book also supports Java in Android Studio, and C# in the Unity game engine. Taking inspiration from the world of James Bond, this book will add a touch of adventure and computer vision to your daily routine. You’ll be able to protect your home and car with intelligent camera systems that analyze obstacles, people, and even cats. In addition to this, you’ll also learn how to train a search engine to praise or criticize the images that it finds, and build a mobile app that speaks to you and responds to your body language.By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the knowledge you need to advance your skills as an app developer and a computer vision specialist.

Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel. Model and analyze data using Power Pivot, DAX, and Cube functions

Bernard Obeng Boateng, Michael Olafusi

Microsoft Excel's BI solutions have evolved, offering users more flexibility and control over analyzing data directly in Excel. Features like PivotTables, Data Model, Power Query, and Power Pivot empower Excel users to efficiently get, transform, model, aggregate, and visualize data.Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel offers a practical way to demystify the use and application of these tools using real-world examples and simple illustrations.This book will introduce you to the world of data modeling in Excel, as well as definitions and best practices in data structuring for both normalized and denormalized data. The next set of chapters will take you through the useful features of Data Model and Power Pivot, helping you get to grips with the types of schemas (snowflake and star) and create relationships within multiple tables. You’ll also understand how to create powerful and flexible measures using DAX and Cube functions.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to apply the acquired knowledge in real-world scenarios and build an interactive dashboard that will help you make important decisions.

Django 5 for the Impatient. Learn the core concepts of Django to develop Python web applications - Second Edition

Daniel Correa, Greg Lim

Learning Django can be a challenging and time-consuming activity without the right guidance. With hundreds of tutorials, loads of documentation, and unclear explanations out there, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s most important. This book stands out by teaching you how to use Django in just a few days with a focused approach. In this second edition, you’ll go on a fun, practical, and pragmatic journey to learning full-stack development with Django 5. You’ll start building your first Django app within minutes. As you progress, you’ll learn from concise explanations that will help you get to grips with some of the most important Django features, including URLs, views, templates, models, CSS inclusion, image storage, Django admin panel, and more. You’ll also understand how to design Django MVT (Model-View-Template) architectures and implement them. Additionally, you’ll use Django to develop a movie store application and deploy it to the internet.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to build and deploy your own Django web applications confidently.

Instant Apache Camel Message Routing. Route, transform, split, multicast messages, and do much more with Camel

Bilgin Ibryam, Bilgin Ismet Ibryam

With new APIs and technologies emerging every day, the need for integrating applications is greater than ever before. With the right tools, integrating applications is not hard. Apache Camel is the leading open source integration and message orchestration framework. Apache Camel, which has a variety of connectors and features numerous well-known integration patterns, has an enormous advantage over home grown integration solutions.Instant Apache Camel Message Routing helps you to get started using the Camel routing engine and Enterprise Integration Patterns. This book will show you how to create integration applications using Apache Camel. You will learn how Camel works and how to leverage the Enterprise Integration Patterns for message routing.Instant Apache Camel Message Routing is a practical and step-by-step guide to Apache Camel and integration patterns. This book will show you how Apache Camel works and how it integrates disparate systems using Enterprise Integration Patterns. The book starts with a high level overview of the Camel architecture before diving into message routing principles. Then, it introduces a number of patterns, complete with diagrams, common use cases, and examples about how to use them with Camel. The book also shows you how to test and monitor Camel applications and cope with failure scenarios.

Transformers for Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision. Explore Generative AI and Large Language Models with Hugging Face, ChatGPT, GPT-4V, and DALL-E 3 - Third Edition

Denis Rothman

Transformers for Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision, Third Edition, explores Large Language Model (LLM) architectures, practical applications, and popular platforms (Hugging Face, OpenAI, and Google Vertex AI) used for Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision (CV). The book guides you through a range of transformer architectures from foundation models and generative AI. You’ll pretrain and fine-tune LLMs and work through different use cases, from summarization to question-answering systems leveraging embedding-based search. You'll also implement Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to enhance accuracy and gain greater control over your LLM outputs. Additionally, you’ll understand common LLM risks, such as hallucinations, memorization, and privacy issues, and implement mitigation strategies using moderation models alongside rule-based systems and knowledge integration. Dive into generative vision transformers and multimodal architectures, and build practical applications, such as image and video classification. Go further and combine different models and platforms to build AI solutions and explore AI agent capabilities. This book provides you with an understanding of transformer architectures, including strategies for pretraining, fine-tuning, and LLM best practices.

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook. For C++ developers, this is the book that can swiftly propel you into the potentially profitable world of Android games. The 70+ step-by-step recipes using Android NDK will give you the wide-ranging knowledge you need

Sergey Kosarevsky, Viktor Latypov

Android NDK is used for multimedia applications which require direct access to a system's resources. Android NDK is also the key for portability, which in turn provides a reasonably comfortable development and debugging process using familiar tools such as GCC and Clang toolchains. If your wish to build Android games using this amazing framework, then this book is a must-have.This book provides you with a number of clear step-by-step recipes which will help you to start developing mobile games with Android NDK and boost your productivity debugging them on your computer. This book will also provide you with new ways of working as well as some useful tips and tricks that will demonstrably increase your development speed and efficiency.This book will take you through a number of easy-to-follow recipes that will help you to take advantage of the Android NDK as well as some popular C++ libraries. It presents Android application development in C++ and shows you how to create a complete gaming application. You will learn how to write portable multithreaded C++ code, use HTTP networking, play audio files, use OpenGL ES, to render high-quality text, and how to recognize user gestures on multi-touch devices. If you want to leverage your C++ skills in mobile development and add performance to your Android applications, then this is the book for you.

AI Strategies for Web Development. Build next-gen, intelligent websites by unleashing AI's power in design, personalization, and ethics

Anderson Soares Furtado Oliveira, Elijah Low, Marcelo Augusto Gonçalves Bardi

If you’re a web developer looking to leverage the power of AI in your projects, then this book is for you. Written by an AI and ML expert with more than 15 years of experience, AI Strategies for Web Development takes you on a transformative journey through the dynamic intersection of AI and web development, offering a hands-on learning experience.The first part of the book focuses on uncovering the profound impact of AI on web projects, exploring fundamental concepts, and navigating popular frameworks and tools. As you progress, you’ll learn how to build smart AI applications with design intelligence, personalized user journeys, and coding assistants. Later, you’ll explore how to future-proof your web development projects using advanced AI strategies and understand AI’s impact on jobs. Toward the end, you’ll immerse yourself in AI-augmented development, crafting intelligent web applications and navigating the ethical landscape.Packed with insights into next-gen development environments, AI-augmented practices, emerging realities, interfaces, and security governance, this web development book acts as your roadmap to staying ahead in the AI and web development domain.

Professional Azure SQL Managed Database Administration. Efficiently manage and modernize data in the cloud using Azure SQL - Third Edition

Ahmad Osama, Shashikant Shakya

Despite being the cloud version of SQL Server, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance stands out in various aspects when it comes to management, maintenance, and administration. Updated with the latest Azure features, Professional Azure SQL Managed Database Administration continues to be a comprehensive guide for becoming proficient in data management. The book begins by introducing you to the Azure SQL managed databases (Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance), explaining their architecture, and how they differ from an on-premises SQL server. You will then learn how to perform common tasks, such as migrating, backing up, and restoring a SQL Server database to an Azure database. As you progress, you will study how you can save costs and manage and scale multiple SQL databases using elastic pools. You will also implement a disaster recovery solution using standard and active geo-replication. Finally, you will explore the monitoring and tuning of databases, the key features of databases, and the phenomenon of app modernization. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the key aspects of an Azure SQL database and Azure SQL managed instance, including migration, backup restorations, performance optimization, high availability, and disaster recovery.

Mastering QlikView Data Visualization. Take your QlikView skills to the next level and master the art of creating visual data analysis for real business needs

Karl Pover

Just because you know how to swing a hammer doesn't mean you know how to build a house. Now that you've learned how to use QlikView, it's time to learn how to develop meaningful QlikView applications that deliver what your business users need.You will explore the requirements and the data from several business departments in order to deliver the most amazing analysis and data visualizations. In doing so, you will practice using advanced QlikView functions, chart object property options, and extensions to solve real-worldchallenges.

Windows Server 2019 Administration Fundamentals. A beginner's guide to managing and administering Windows Server environments - Second Edition

Bekim Dauti

Windows Server 2019 is the server operating system introduced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems, developed concurrently with Windows 10. This book will not only get you started with Windows Server 2019, but will also help you prepare for the MTA 98-365 exam. With step-by-step instructions and easy-to-understand graphics, you will become well-versed with the roles, features, and functions of Windows Server 2019.Starting with the installation process, upgrades, and basic configuration, you will move on to explore roles and features such as Active Directory, Hyper-V, remote access, storage, and printers. The book then takes you through maintenance and troubleshooting tasks to guide you in efficiently managing Windows Server 2019. In addition, it covers Windows Server 2019 best practices using real-world examples. Complete with questionnaires, and detailed answers at the end of the book, you can test your understanding of the concepts covered in each chapter.By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the knowledge you need to troubleshoot, update, and maintain servers so as to ensure business continuity.

Mastering OpenCV with Practical Computer Vision Projects. This is the definitive advanced tutorial for OpenCV, designed for those with basic C++ skills. The computer vision projects are divided into easily assimilated chapters with an emphasis on practical involvement for an easier learning curve

Mora Saragih, Eugene Khvedchenia, Daniel L?É?íÂ!(C)lis Baggio, Shervin Emami, ...

Computer Vision is fast becoming an important technology and is used in Mars robots, national security systems, automated factories, driver-less cars, and medical image analysis to new forms of human-computer interaction. OpenCV is the most common library for computer vision, providing hundreds of complex and fast algorithms. But it has a steep learning curve and limited in-depth tutorials.Mastering OpenCV with Practical Computer Vision Projects is the perfect book for developers with just basic OpenCV skills who want to try practical computer vision projects, as well as the seasoned OpenCV experts who want to add more Computer Vision topics to their skill set or gain more experience with OpenCV's new C++ interface before migrating from the C API to the C++ API.Each chapter is a separate project including the necessary background knowledge, so try them all one-by-one or jump straight to the projects you're most interested in.Create working prototypes from this book including real-time mobile apps, Augmented Reality, 3D shape from video, or track faces & eyes, fluid wall using Kinect, number plate recognition and so on.Mastering OpenCV with Practical Computer Vision Projects gives you rapid training in nine computer vision areas with useful projects.

Oracle Database 11gR2 Performance Tuning Cookbook. Shifting your Oracle Database into top gear takes a lot of know-how and fine-tuning ability. The 80+ recipes in this Cookbook will give you those skills along with the ability to troubleshoot if things starts running slowly

Ciro Fiorillo

Oracle's Database offers great performance, scalability, and many features for DBAs and developers. Due to a wide choice of technologies, successful applications are good candidates to run into performance issues and when a problem arises it's very difficult to identify the cause and the right solution to the problem.The Oracle Database 11g R2 Performance Tuning Cookbook helps DBAs and developers to understand every aspect of Oracle Database that can affect performance. You will be guided through implementing the correct solution in a proactive way before problems arise, and how to diagnose issues on your Oracle database-based solutions.This fast-paced book offers solutions starting from application design and development, through the implementation of well-performing applications, to the details of deployment and delivering best-performance databases.With this book you will quickly learn to apply the right methodology to tune the performance of an Oracle Database, and to optimize application design and SQL and PL/SQL code. By following the real-world examples you will see how to store your data in correct structures and access and manipulate them at a lightning speed. You will learn to speed up sort operations, hack the optimizer and the data loading process, and diagnose and tune memory, I/O, and contention issues.The purpose of this cookbook is to provide concise recipes, which will help you to build and maintain a very high-speed Oracle Database environment.

Advanced C++ Programming Cookbook. Become an expert C++ programmer by mastering concepts like templates, concurrency, and type deduction

Dr. Rian Quinn

If you think you've mastered C++ and know everything it takes to write robust applications, you'll be in for a surprise. With this book, you'll gain comprehensive insights into C++, covering exclusive tips and interesting techniques to enhance your app development process.You'll kick off with the basic principles of library design and development, which will help you understand how to write reusable and maintainable code. You'll then discover the importance of exception safety, and how you can avoid unexpected errors or bugs in your code. The book will take you through the modern elements of C++, such as move semantics, type deductions, and coroutines. As you advance, you'll delve into template programming - the standard tool for most library developers looking to achieve high code reusability. You'll explore the STL and learn how to avoid common pitfalls while implementing templates. Later, you'll learn about the problems of multithreaded programming such as data races, deadlocks, and thread starvation. You'll also learn high-performance programming by using benchmarking tools and libraries. Finally, you'll discover advanced techniques for debugging and testing to ensure code reliability.By the end of this book, you'll have become an expert at C++ programming and will have gained the skills to solve complex development problems with ease.

IT Audit Field Manual. Strengthen your cyber defense through proactive IT auditing

Lewis Heuermann

As cyber threats evolve and regulations tighten, IT professionals struggle to maintain effective auditing practices and ensure robust cybersecurity across complex systems. Drawing from over a decade of submarine military service and extensive cybersecurity experience, Lewis offers a unique blend of technical expertise and field-tested insights in this comprehensive field manual.Serving as a roadmap for beginners as well as experienced professionals, this manual guides you from foundational concepts and audit planning to in-depth explorations of auditing various IT systems and networks, including Cisco devices, next-generation firewalls, cloud environments, endpoint security, and Linux systems. You’ll develop practical skills in assessing security configurations, conducting risk assessments, and ensuring compliance with privacy regulations. This book also covers data protection, reporting, remediation, advanced auditing techniques, and emerging trends.Complete with insightful guidance on building a successful career in IT auditing, by the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with the tools to navigate the complex landscape of cybersecurity and compliance, bridging the gap between technical expertise and practical application.

Mastering PyTorch. Build powerful neural network architectures using advanced PyTorch 1.x features

Ashish Ranjan Jha, Dr. Gopinath Pillai

Deep learning is driving the AI revolution, and PyTorch is making it easier than ever before for anyone to build deep learning applications. This PyTorch book will help you uncover expert techniques to get the most out of your data and build complex neural network models.The book starts with a quick overview of PyTorch and explores using convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures for image classification. You'll then work with recurrent neural network (RNN) architectures and transformers for sentiment analysis. As you advance, you'll apply deep learning across different domains, such as music, text, and image generation using generative models and explore the world of generative adversarial networks (GANs). You'll not only build and train your own deep reinforcement learning models in PyTorch but also deploy PyTorch models to production using expert tips and techniques. Finally, you'll get to grips with training large models efficiently in a distributed manner, searching neural architectures effectively with AutoML, and rapidly prototyping models using PyTorch and fast.ai.By the end of this PyTorch book, you'll be able to perform complex deep learning tasks using PyTorch to build smart artificial intelligence models.

Cocos2d Cross-Platform Game Development Cookbook. Develop games for iOS and Android using Cocos2d with the aid of over 70 step-by-step recipes - Second Edition

Siddharth Shekar, Raydelto Hernandez

Cocos2d is the world’s leading game development framework for developing iOS games. With the introduction of Swift and Spritebuilder, it has become easier than ever to develop the games of your dreams without much effort. With Cocos2d, you can also deploy the game on Android, thereby maximizing profit and reducing development and porting costs.The book starts off with a detailed look at how to implement sprites and animations into your game to make it livelier. You will then learn to add scenes to the game such as the gameplay scene and options scene and create menus and buttons in these scenes, as well as creating transitions between them. From there on, you will get an understanding of how to program user interactions such as tapping, holding, and swiping. You’ll then add accelerometer inputs and physics to the scene, and make objects respond back to the inputs. A game is practically incomplete without audio being added, so this will be covered next. The next section will include ways to add Artificial Intelligence to enemies in the game, allowing them to patrol, chase, and shoot in a projectile manner. You will then learn to use NSUserDefault to save and load game progress, and create and access files using JSON, Plist, and XML files for custom storage and retrieval of data. Then you will learn to add dynamic lighting to your game and will use industry-wide tools such as Texture Packer, Glyph Designer, Physics Editor, Particle Designer, and Sprite Illuminator to create more visually appealing and performance-optimized games.Towards the end of the book, we dive into Apple’s latest programming language—Swift, highlighting the major differences between Objective C and Swift. The book culminates with taking your existing game developed for iOS and porting it to Android, showing you how to install the Android Xcode plugin as well.