Discovering Business Intelligence using MicroStrategy 9. The MicroStrategy platform can make your Business Intelligence (BI) activities so much more communicative and collaborative. With this book you'll learn the capabilities of the platform and how to use them to revolutionize your BI

Nelson Enriquez, Juan Nelson, Samundar Singh Rathore

Business Intelligence is a type of technology that has been proven to support business decisions in an organization. MicroStrategy 9 is a fully-integrated BI platform that makes Business Intelligence faster, easier, and more user-friendly. It enables businesses to generate their own reports and dashboards without the need for technical knowledge.This practical, hands-on guide will provide Business Intelligence for executives, as well as enable BI reports and dashboards without the dependency of IT savvy personnel. It will allow you to design, build, and share business relevant data in hours, in a secure way, including mobile devices and show you how to leverage your transactional information.This example-oriented book looks at the value proposition of cloud computing and the MicroStrategy platform, and features practical exercises for BI reports and dashboard enablement, including the design phase and best practices for when we design a BI report.The book begins with an exploration of MicroStrategy along with typical business needs. Our focus then shifts to best practices for BI reports and dashboard definitions from the functional stand point, with easy-to-do exercises that will allow you to enable the reports in the platform. You will learn about scorecards and dashboards, along with sharing the reports. Next, you will get acquainted with cloud-based services provided by the MicroStrategy platform. By the end of this book, you will able to design, enable, and share BI reports and dashboards without the need for comprehensive technical knowledge, and leverage the latest technology on the market.

Test-Driven iOS Development with Swift. Create fully-featured and highly functional iOS apps by writing tests first

Dr. Dominik Hauser

Test-driven development (TDD) is a proven way to find software bugs early. Writing tests before your code improves the structure and maintainability of your app. Test-Driven iOS Development with Swift will help you understand the process of TDD and how it impacts your applications written in Swift. Through practical, real-world examples, you’ll start seeing how to implement TDD in context. We will begin with an overview of your TDD workflow and then deep-dive into unit testing concepts and code cycles. We will showcase the workings of functional tests, which will help you improve the user interface. Finally, you will learn about automating deployments and continuous integration to run an environment.

GameMaker Cookbook. Over 50 hands-on recipes to help you build exhilarating games using the robust GameMaker system

Brandon Gardiner, Julián Rojas Millán

GameMaker: Studio started off as a tool capable of creating simple games using a drag-and-drop interface. Since then, it has grown to become a powerful instrument to make release-ready games for PC, Mac, mobile devices, and even current-gen consoles. GameMaker is designed to allow its users to develop games without having to learn any of the complex programming languages such as C++ or Java. It also allows redistribution across multiple platforms.This book teaches you to harness GameMaker: Studio’s full potential and take your game development to new heights.It begins by covering the basics and lays a solid foundation for advanced GameMaker concepts. Moving on, it covers topics such as controls, physics, and advanced movement, employing a strategic approach to the learning curve. The book concludes by providing insights into complex concepts such as the GUI, menus, save system, lighting, particles, and VFX.By the end of the book, you will be able to design games using GameMaker: Studio and implement the same techniques in other games you intend to design.

Visual Studio 2013 Cookbook. Understanding the latest features of Visual Studio can speed up and streamline your projects. And there’s no better learning tool than this collection of focused recipes that gives you the fast, hands-on experience you need

Jeff Martin, Richard Banks, Richard Bruce Banks

Parallel Programming with Python. Develop efficient parallel systems using the robust Python environment

Jan Palach, Jan Palach V Cruz da Silva

Creating Universes with SAP BusinessObjects. Create and maintain powerful SAP BusinessObjects Universes with the SAP Information Design Tool

Taha Mahmoud

CentOS High Availability. Leverage the power of high availability clusters on CentOS Linux, the enterprise-class, open source operating system

Mitja Resman, Jonathan Hobson

PyTorch 1.x Reinforcement Learning Cookbook. Over 60 recipes to design, develop, and deploy self-learning AI models using Python

Yuxi (Hayden) Liu

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a branch of machine learning that has gained popularity in recent times. It allows you to train AI models that learn from their own actions and optimize their behavior. PyTorch has also emerged as the preferred tool for training RL models because of its efficiency and ease of use.With this book, you'll explore the important RL concepts and the implementation of algorithms in PyTorch 1.x. The recipes in the book, along with real-world examples, will help you master various RL techniques, such as dynamic programming, Monte Carlo simulations, temporal difference, and Q-learning. You'll also gain insights into industry-specific applications of these techniques. Later chapters will guide you through solving problems such as the multi-armed bandit problem and the cartpole problem using the multi-armed bandit algorithm and function approximation. You'll also learn how to use Deep Q-Networks to complete Atari games, along with how to effectively implement policy gradients. Finally, you'll discover how RL techniques are applied to Blackjack, Gridworld environments, internet advertising, and the Flappy Bird game.By the end of this book, you'll have developed the skills you need to implement popular RL algorithms and use RL techniques to solve real-world problems.

Moodle 4 Administration. An administrator's guide to configuring, securing, customizing, and extending Moodle - Fourth Edition

Alex Büchner

This updated fourth edition of the classic Moodle Administration guide has been written from the ground up and covers all the new Moodle features in great breadth and depth. The topics have also been augmented with professional diagrams, illustrations, and checklists.The book starts by covering basic tasks such as how to set up and configure Moodle and perform day-to-day administration activities. You’ll then progress to more advanced topics that show you how to customize and extend Moodle, manage authentication and enrolments, and work with roles and capabilities. Next, you'll learn how to configure pedagogical and technical Moodle plugins and ensure your LMS complies with data protection regulations. Then, you will learn how to tighten Moodle’s security, improve its performance, and configure backup and restore procedures. Finally, you'll gain insights on how to compile custom reports, configure learning analytics, enable mobile learning, integrate Moodle via web services, and support different types of multi-tenancy.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to set up an efficient, fully fledged, and secure Moodle system.

Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS. Develop future-proof responsive websites using the latest HTML5 and CSS techniques - Third Edition

Ben Frain

Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS, Third Edition is a renewed and extended version of one of the most comprehensive and bestselling books on the latest HTML5 and CSS tools and techniques for responsive web design.Written in the author's signature friendly and informal style, this edition covers all the newest developments and improvements in responsive web design including better user accessibility, variable fonts and font loading, CSS Scroll Snap, and much, much more. With a new chapter dedicated to CSS Grid, you will understand how it differs from the Flexbox layout mechanism and when you should use one over the other.Furthermore, you will acquire practical knowledge of SVG, writing accessible HTML markup, creating stunning aesthetics and effects with CSS, applying transitions, transformations, and animations, integrating media queries, and more. The book concludes by exploring some exclusive tips and approaches for front-end development from the author.By the end of this book, you will not only have a comprehensive understanding of responsive web design and what is possible with the latest HTML5 and CSS, but also the knowledge of how to best implement each technique.

Systems Engineering Demystified. A practitioner's handbook for developing complex systems using a model-based approach

Jon Holt

Systems engineering helps us to understand, specify, and develop complex systems, and is applied across a wide set of disciplines. As systems and their associated problems become increasingly complex in this evermore connected world, the need for more rigorous, demonstrable, and repeatable techniques also increases.Written by Professor Jon Holt – an internationally recognized systems engineering expert – this book provides a blend of technical and business aspects you need to understand in order to develop successful systems. You'll start with systems engineering basics and understand the complexity, communication, and different stakeholders' views of the system. The book then covers essential aspects of model-based systems engineering, systems, life cycles, and processes, along with techniques to develop systems. Moving on, you'll explore system models and visualization techniques, focusing on the SysML, and discover how solutions can be defined by developing effective system design, verification, and validation techniques. The book concludes by taking you through key management processes and systems engineering best practices and guidelines.By the end of this systems engineering book, you'll be able to confidently apply modern model-based systems engineering techniques to your own systems and projects.

Learning Jupyter. Select, Share, Interact and Integrate with Jupyter Not

Dan Toomey

Jupyter Notebook is a web-based environment that enables interactive computing in notebook documents. It allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and explanatory text. The Jupyter Notebook system is extensively used in domains such as data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modeling, machine learning, and much more.This book starts with a detailed overview of the Jupyter Notebook system and its installation in different environments. Next we’ll help you will learn to integrate Jupyter system with different programming languages such as R, Python, JavaScript, and Julia and explore the various versions and packages that are compatible with the Notebook system. Moving ahead, you master interactive widgets, namespaces, and working with Jupyter in a multiuser mode.Towards the end, you will use Jupyter with a big data set and will apply all the functionalities learned throughout the book.

IBM SmartCloud Essentials. This book provides an overview of what modern cloud computing involves, and then focuses specifically on the most important features of the IBM SmartCloud portfolio. A crash course in implementing cloud computing for your organization

Edwin Schouten

IBM, the oldest technology company in the world, has a wide variety of powerful cloud services to offer from its IBM SmartCloud portfolio. Being able to differentiate them, and knowing how to use them efficiently gives you a competitive advantage over others.Starting with the basics of cloud computing, this guide covers the wide range of cloud components, services, and solutions in the IBM SmartCloud portfolio. Following on from this, you'll be introduced to the public , Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud service - IBM SmartCloud Enterprise; before peeking into the future of IBM cloud services. Using this book, you will discover the advantage of both traditional enterprise computing and public cloud computing.You will explore IBM's portfolio of cloud computing solutions ranging from infrastructure services (IaaS), to business services (BPaaS), and private to public cloud. You will be taken through a number of in-depth use-cases, examples, and hand-on exercises that will help you to take advantage of infrastructure as a service solution IBM SmartCloud Enterprise quickly and easily.You will learn everything you need to know about the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, including how to take advantage of cloud computing within your organization.

Building Android Games with Cocos2d-x. Learn to create engaging and spectacular games for Android using Cocos2d-x

Raydelto Hernadez, Raydelto Hernandez

NumPy Cookbook. If you’re a Python developer with basic NumPy skills, the 70+ recipes in this brilliant cookbook will boost your skills in no time. Learn to raise productivity levels and code faster and cleaner with the open source mathematical library

Ivan Idris, NumPy

Today's world of science and technology is all about speed and flexibility. When it comes to scientific computing, NumPy is on the top of the list. NumPy will give you both speed and high productivity.NumPy Cookbook will teach you all about NumPy, a leading scientific computing library. NumPy replaces a lot of the functionality of Matlab and Mathematica, but in contrast to those products, it is free and open source.Numpy Cookbook will teach you to write readable, efficient, and fast code that is as close to the language of Mathematics as much as possible with the cutting edge open source NumPy software library.You will learn about installing and using NumPy and related concepts. At the end of the book, we will explore related scientific computing projects.This book will give you a solid foundation in NumPy arrays and universal functions. You will also learn about plotting with Matplotlib and the related SciPy project through examples.NumPy Cookbook will help you to be productive with NumPy and write clean and fast code.

Data Augmentation with Python. Enhance deep learning accuracy with data augmentation methods for image, text, audio, and tabular data

Duc Haba

Data is paramount in AI projects, especially for deep learning and generative AI, as forecasting accuracy relies on input datasets being robust. Acquiring additional data through traditional methods can be challenging, expensive, and impractical, and data augmentation offers an economical option to extend the dataset.The book teaches you over 20 geometric, photometric, and random erasing augmentation methods using seven real-world datasets for image classification and segmentation. You’ll also review eight image augmentation open source libraries, write object-oriented programming (OOP) wrapper functions in Python Notebooks, view color image augmentation effects, analyze safe levels and biases, as well as explore fun facts and take on fun challenges. As you advance, you’ll discover over 20 character and word techniques for text augmentation using two real-world datasets and excerpts from four classic books. The chapter on advanced text augmentation uses machine learning to extend the text dataset, such as Transformer, Word2vec, BERT, GPT-2, and others. While chapters on audio and tabular data have real-world data, open source libraries, amazing custom plots, and Python Notebook, along with fun facts and challenges.By the end of this book, you will be proficient in image, text, audio, and tabular data augmentation techniques.