Systems Engineering Demystified. Apply modern, model-based systems engineering techniques to build complex systems - Second Edition

Jon Holt, Tim Weilkiens

Systems engineering helps in developing and describing complex systems. Written by an internationally-recognized systems engineering expert, this updated edition provides insight into elements to consider when designing a complex system that is robust and successful.The latest edition covers the new approaches of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and its deployment techniques using the Trinity approach. You will learn about the system engineering life cycle and processes to implement. Effective systems can be built only when the system is designed with close attention to detail, meaning each aspect of the system is recognized and understood before the system is built. The book explains in great detail, different system models and visualization techniques, with a focus on SysML, to help you visualize a system in the design phase. You will also learn various verification and validation techniques to ensure your system design is ready to be implemented. The book ends with key management processes, systems engineering best practices, and guidelines, with a new section on effective approaches based on the author’s impressive 30 years of experience in the field.By the end of this systems engineering book, you'll be able to apply modern model-based systems engineering techniques to your own systems and projects.

Extending Puppet. Tools and Techniques for smarter infrastructure configuration - Second Edition

Alessandro Franceschi, Jaime Soriano Pastor

Puppet has changed the way we manage our systems, but Puppet itself is changing and evolving, and so are the ways we are using it. To tackle our IT infrastructure challenges and avoid common errors when designing our architectures, an up-to-date, practical, and focused view of the current and future Puppet evolution is what we need. With Puppet, you define the state of your IT infrastructure, and it automatically enforces the desired state.This book will be your guide to designing and deploying your Puppet architecture. It will help you utilize Puppet to manage your IT infrastructure. Get to grips with Hiera and learn how to install and configure it, before learning best practices for writing reusable and maintainable code. You will also be able to explore the latest features of Puppet 4, before executing, testing, and deploying Puppet across your systems. As you progress, Extending Puppet takes you through higher abstraction modules, along with tips for effective code workflow management.Finally, you will learn how to develop plugins for Puppet - as well as some useful techniques that can help you to avoid common errors and overcome everyday challenges.

Unity 4.x Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide. A seat-of-your-pants manual for building fun, groovy little games quickly with Unity 4.x - Third Edition

Ryan Henson Creighton

Unity is one of the biggest game engines in the world, providing the user with a range of important tools that they need to bring their ideas into reality. Beginner game developers are optimistic, passionate, and ambitious, but that ambition can be dangerous! Too often, budding indie developers and hobbyists bite off more than they can chew. Games like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Fruit Ninja are fun, simple games that have delighted players and delivered big profits to their creators. This is the perfect climate for new game developers to succeed by creating simple games with Unity, starting today.This book teaches you the ins and outs of the unique Unity game engine interface. Clear and concise code examples written in both Unity Javascript and C# take you through the step-by-step process of building five small, functional games. With this understanding you can start making your own mark on the game industry!With absolutely no programming or game development experience, you will learn how to build five simple games in Unity by following step-by-step instructions, peppered with amusing analogies and anecdotes from an experienced indie developer. Following a primer on simplifying your game ideas to that single “something” that keeps players coming back for more, dive into the Unity game engine by creating a simple bat-and-ball game. From there, you'll build a complete memory game using only the Unity GUI system. After building a 2.5D mouse avoider game, you'll learn how to re-skin the project to completely change the game's theme. Incorporating everything you've learned, you'll return to complete the bat-and-ball game by adding scoring, replay flow, sound effects, and animations. Finally, in the new bonus chapter, you'll program some simple AI (Artificial Intelligence) for a tic tac toe game.Unity 4.x Game Development by Example is a fun and light-hearted exploration of one of the most powerful game engines on the market today. Find out what all the fuss is about by getting up to speed using this book!

Deep Learning with MXNet Cookbook. Discover an extensive collection of recipes for creating and implementing AI models on MXNet

Andrés P. Torres, Paul Newman

Explore the capabilities of the open-source deep learning framework MXNet to train and deploy neural network models and implement state-of-the-art (SOTA) architectures in Computer Vision, natural language processing, and more. The Deep Learning with MXNet Cookbook is your gateway to constructing fast and scalable deep learning solutions using Apache MXNet.Starting with the different versions of MXNet, this book helps you choose the optimal version for your use and install your library. You’ll work with MXNet/Gluon libraries to solve classification and regression problems and gain insights into their inner workings. Venturing further, you’ll use MXNet to analyze toy datasets in the areas of numerical regression, data classification, picture classification, and text classification. From building and training deep-learning neural network architectures from scratch to delving into advanced concepts such as transfer learning, this book covers it all. You'll master the construction and deployment of neural network architectures, including CNN, RNN, LSTMs, and Transformers, and integrate these models into your applications.By the end of this deep learning book, you’ll wield the MXNet and Gluon libraries to expertly create and train deep learning networks using GPUs and deploy them in different environments.

GlassFish Administration. Administer and configure the GlassFish v2 application server

Xuekun Kou

To build a powerful production environment for your Java EE systems, you need a great application server, and the skills to manage it. This book gives you all that you are looking for.This book will help you gain the necessary skills to install, configure, tune, and troubleshoot GlassFish so that you can fully unleash its power. It will teach you how to use the GlassFish application server, with a special focus on administration tasks. It presents the GlassFish administrative tasks in a logical sequence, with each chapter focusing on a specific topic.Starting with installation and moving through configuration, this book takes a careful look at the administration console so that you get a complete understanding of GlassFish and its administrative features. It will help you understand how to deploy Java EE, Ruby on Rails and other supported applications to GlassFish, and how to configure the necessary resources for these applications. You will also learn how to maintain, tune, and troubleshoot your GlassFish server. Also includes a bonus chapter introducing Glassfish v3.

Flutter Projects. A practical, project-based guide to building real-world cross-platform mobile applications and games

Simone Alessandria

Flutter is a modern reactive mobile framework that removes a lot of the complexity found in building native mobile apps for iOS and Android. With Flutter, developers can now build fast and native mobile apps from a single codebase.This book is packed with 11 projects that will help you build your own mobile applications using Flutter. It begins with an introduction to Dart programming and explains how it can be used with the Flutter SDK to customize mobile apps. Each chapter contains instructions on how to build an independent app from scratch, and each project focuses on important Flutter features.From building Flutter Widgets and applying animations to using databases (SQLite and sembast) and Firebase, you'll build on your knowledge through the chapters. As you progress, you’ll learn how to connect to remote services, integrate maps, and even use Flare to create apps and games in Flutter. Gradually, you’ll be able to create apps and games that are ready to be published on the Google Play Store and the App Store. In the concluding chapters, you’ll learn how to use the BLoC pattern and various best practices related to creating enterprise apps with Flutter.By the end of this book, you will have the skills you need to write and deliver fully functional mobile apps using Flutter.

Mastering QuickBooks 2024. Bookkeeping with US QuickBooks Online for small businesses - Fifth Edition

Crystalynn Shelton

In today's competitive business landscape, efficient financial management is crucial for success. QuickBooks Online has emerged as the go-to accounting software for small businesses, offering a user-friendly platform to manage finances, track expenses, and gain valuable insights. This new edition will help you use QuickBooks Online from scratch and customize it to suit your small business needs. Written by accounting expert Crystalynn Shelton, it takes you on an in-depth journey, from setting up your account to mastering advanced features and customizations.This book empowers you to conquer the latest features of QuickBooks Online 2024,;overcome challenges encountered during migration from desktop to online; plan cash flow, profits, revenue with precision; and streamline billing, expense tracking, and financial reporting. As you progress, you’ll learn to manage sales tax, including how to set up, collect, track, pay, and report sales tax payments. You’ll explore how to export reports to Google Sheets, use the custom chart builder, import budgets, and perform smart reporting with with using data sync with Excel.. You'll learn how to tailor QuickBooks Online to your specific business needs. By the end of the book, you’ll master the art of QuickBooks Online and take control of your business finances

Applied Supervised Learning with R. Use machine learning libraries of R to build models that solve business problems and predict future trends

Karthik Ramasubramanian, Jojo Moolayil

R provides excellent visualization features that are essential for exploring data before using it in automated learning.Applied Supervised Learning with R helps you cover the complete process of employing R to develop applications using supervised machine learning algorithms for your business needs. The book starts by helping you develop your analytical thinking to create a problem statement using business inputs and domain research. You will then learn different evaluation metrics that compare various algorithms, and later progress to using these metrics to select the best algorithm for your problem. After finalizing the algorithm you want to use, you will study the hyperparameter optimization technique to fine-tune your set of optimal parameters. The book demonstrates how you can add different regularization terms to avoid overfitting your model.By the end of this book, you will have gained the advanced skills you need for modeling a supervised machine learning algorithm that precisely fulfills your business needs.

Android Native Development Kit Cookbook. Create Android apps using Native C/C++ with the expert guidance contained in this cookbook. From basic routines to advanced multimedia development, it helps you harness the full power of Android NDK

Liu Feipeng

Building Android applications would usually mean that you spend all of your time working in Java. There are however times when this is not the most efficient or best method for the application being built. This is where Android NDK comes in. Android NDK allows the developer to write in Native C/C++, giving you the power to reuse code and libraries and also, in most cases, increase the speed and efficiency of your application.The Android Native Development Kit Cookbook will help you understand the development, building, and debugging of your native Android applications. We will discover and learn JNI programming and essential NDK APIs such as OpenGL ES, and the native application API. We will then explore the process of porting existing libraries and software to NDK. By the end of this book you will be able to build your own apps in NDK apps.Android Native Development Kit Cookbook begins with basic recipes that will help you in the building and debugging of native apps, and JNI programming. The recipes cover various topics of application development with Android NDK such as OpenGL programming and Multimedia programming. We will begin with a simple recipe, Hello NDK, before moving on to cover advanced topics with recipes on OpenGL ES that focus on 2D and 3D graphics, as well as recipes that discuss working with NDK and external APIs. If you are looking for ways to make your application available in Android and take measures to boost your application's performance, then this Cookbook is for you.

Oracle Business Intelligence : The Condensed Guide to Analysis and Reporting. An introduction to Oracle Business Intelligence Solutions for business analysis and reporting

Yuli Vasiliev

Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of obtaining business information from available data and today, most businesses use BI to control their affairs. With Business Analysis and Reporting in Oracle Business Intelligence, you can quickly learn how to put the power of the Oracle Business Intelligence solutions to work. To jump start with analysis and reporting of data on an Oracle Business Intelligence SE platform and to keep the process of learning simple and interesting requires numerous annotated examples.The examples in this introductory guide will make you immediately familiar with tools included in the Oracle Business Intelligence package. This book will teach you how to find answers to common business questions and make informed business decisions as well as helping you to use Oracle Business Intelligence SE platform and prepare database for analysis. This practical, example-rich guide starts by explaining concepts behind getting business information from data. We then move smoothly onto the tools included in the Oracle Business Intelligence SE and Oracle Business Intelligence Tools packages. Along the way, we will look at how to take advantage of Discoverer Administrator, Discoverer Plus, and Discoverer Viewer for analysis and reporting. You will also learn how to build, deploy and execute reports using Oracle Reports, and integrate data from different data sources with warehousing, employing Oracle Warehouse Builder software. Covering advanced Oracle Business Intelligence features, this book will teach you how to pivot data, drill it up and down, as well as display it visually in graphs.

Architecting AWS with Terraform. Design resilient and secure Cloud Infrastructures with Terraform on Amazon Web Services

Erol Kavas

Infrastructure as code (IaC) and Terraform have become essential tools for managing cloud infrastructure and automating deployment processes. Mastering Terraform on AWS presents a step-by-step approach on how to master these tools and build a secure and scalable AWS infrastructure. The book starts with an introduction to patterns and anti-patterns of IaC and Terraform, explaining the common mistakes and pitfalls you must avoid. You’ll then learn about the importance of planning and designing infrastructure projects in AWS and making informed decisions for projects in AWS Terraform. You’ll find out how to implement Terraform in your projects and deploy serverless projects. Next, you’ll be able to deploy containers in AWS with Terraform, exploring the best practices for Terraform IaC projects. You’ll understand how you can leverage Terraform for enterprises, build Git workflows for IaC and Terraform projects, and automate deployment of Terraform projects. The last set of chapters will teach you how to govern AWS with Terraform and build a secure infrastructure. Finally, you’ll discover how to achieve a perfect AWS infrastructure with Terraform. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a comprehensive understanding of the various aspects of Terraform and IaC, along with the knowledge required to build, manage, and deploy complex infrastructures on AWS.

Digital Transformation and Modernization with IBM API Connect. A practical guide to developing, deploying, and managing high-performance and secure hybrid-cloud APIs

Bryon Kataoka, James Brennan, Ashish Aggarwal, Matt Roberts

IBM API Connect enables organizations to drive digital innovation using its scalable and robust API management capabilities across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. With API Connect's security, flexibility, and high performance, you'll be able to meet the needs of your enterprise and clients by extending your API footprint. This book provides a complete roadmap to create, manage, govern, and publish your APIs.You'll start by learning about API Connect components, such as API managers, developer portals, gateways, and analytics subsystems, as well as the management capabilities provided by CLI commands. You’ll then develop APIs using OpenAPI and discover how you can enhance them with logic policies. The book shows you how to modernize SOAP and FHIR REST services as secure APIs with authentication, OAuth2/OpenID, and JWT, and demonstrates how API Connect provides safeguards for GraphQL APIs as well as published APIs that are easy to discover and well documented. As you advance, the book guides you in generating unit tests that supplement DevOps pipelines using Git and Jenkins for improved agility, and concludes with best practices for implementing API governance and customizing API Connect components.By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to transform your business by speeding up the time-to-market of your products and increase the ROI for your enterprise.

Privilege Escalation Techniques. Learn the art of exploiting Windows and Linux systems

Alexis Ahmed

Privilege Escalation Techniques is a detailed guide to privilege escalation techniques and tools for both Windows and Linux systems. This is a one-of-a-kind resource that will deepen your understanding of both platforms and provide detailed, easy-to-follow instructions for your first foray into privilege escalation. The book uses virtual environments that you can download to test and run tools and techniques. After a refresher on gaining access and surveying systems, each chapter will feature an exploitation challenge in the form of pre-built virtual machines (VMs). As you progress, you will learn how to enumerate and exploit a target Linux or Windows system. You’ll then get a demonstration on how you can escalate your privileges to the highest level.By the end of this book, you will have gained all the knowledge and skills you need to be able to perform local kernel exploits, escalate privileges through vulnerabilities in services, maintain persistence, and enumerate information from the target such as passwords and password hashes.

L÷VE for Lua Game Programming. If you want to create 2D games for Windows, Linux, and OS X, this guide to the L?ñVE framework is a must. Written for hobbyists and professionals, it will help you leverage Lua for fast and easy game development

Darmie Akinlaja, Damilare Akinlaja

L?ñVE is a game development framework for making 2D games using the Lua programming language. L?ñVE is totally free, and can be used in anything from friendly open-source hobby projects, to closed-source commercial ones. Using the Lua programming framework, one can use L?ñVE2D to make any sort of interesting games.L?ñVE for Lua Game Programming will quickly and efficiently guide you through how to develop a video game from idea to prototype. Even if you are new to game programming, with this book, you will soon be able to create as many game titles as you wish without stress.The L?ñVE framework is the quickest and easiest way to build fully-functional 2D video games. It leverages the Lua programming language, which is known to be one of the easiest game development languages to learn and use. With this book, you will master how to develop multi-platform games for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. After downloading and installing L?ñVE, you will learn by example how to draw 2D objects, animate characters using sprites, and how to create game physics and game world maps.L?ñVE for Lua Game Programming makes it easier and quicker for you to learn everything you need to know about game programming. If you're interested in game programming, then this book is exactly what you've been looking for.

Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning. A use-case-driven approach to building and protecting ML pipelines from privacy and security threats

Srinivasa Rao Aravilli, Sam Hamilton

– In an era of evolving privacy regulations, compliance is mandatory for every enterprise – Machine learning engineers face the dual challenge of analyzing vast amounts of data for insights while protecting sensitive information – This book addresses the complexities arising from large data volumes and the scarcity of in-depth privacy-preserving machine learning expertise, and covers a comprehensive range of topics from data privacy and machine learning privacy threats to real-world privacy-preserving cases – As you progress, you’ll be guided through developing anti-money laundering solutions using federated learning and differential privacy – Dedicated sections will explore data in-memory attacks and strategies for safeguarding data and ML models – You’ll also explore the imperative nature of confidential computation and privacy-preserving machine learning benchmarks, as well as frontier research in the field – Upon completion, you’ll possess a thorough understanding of privacy-preserving machine learning, equipping them to effectively shield data from real-world threats and attacks

Learning Raspbian. Get up and running with Raspbian and make the most out of your Raspberry Pi

William Harrington