Publisher: Packt Publishing
Founded in 2004 in Birmingham, UK, Packt's mission is to help the world put software to work in new ways, through the delivery of effective learning and information services to IT professionals. Working towards that vision, we have published over 6,500 books and videos so far, providing IT professionals with the actionable knowledge they need to get the job done - whether that's specific learning on an emerging technology or optimizing key skills in more established tools. As part of our mission, we have also awarded over $1,000,000 through our Open Source Project Royalty scheme, helping numerous projects become household names along the way.
6001
Ebook

Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1. Discover innovative ways to solve your mission-critical integration problems with the ESB Toolkit

Andres Del R-o Benito, Howard Edidin

An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is an architectural pattern and a key enabler in implementing the infrastructure for a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The BizTalk ESB Toolkit is a collection of tools and libraries that extend the BizTalk Server capabilities of supporting a loosely coupled and dynamic messaging architecture. It functions as middleware that provides tools for rapid mediation between services and their consumers. Enabling maximum flexibility at runtime, the BizTalk ESB Toolkit simplifies loosely coupled composition of service endpoints and management of service interactions. The thing about the technology that gets most readers excited is how easy it is to quickly implement flexible and well-architected ESB solutions.Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 ESB Toolkit 2.1 provides you with an easy-to-follow view of the tools and services that make up the toolkit. The content is packed with practical examples on how to utilize the technology, which will be appealing to the readers. This book provides you with all the information you need in one publication. The content is based on practical examples on how to use the technology to make it easier for readers to follow.This book starts off with a quick, high level introduction to ESB architectural principles, how these principles map into the ESB toolkit features, and an introduction to the different components that provide those features. The book then reveals the ins and outs of Itineraries. Next, you'll get engaged in the different ways errors can be handled and monitored by means of the ESB Toolkit features. There will be a hands-on sample on building a custom Repair and Resubmit solution to reprocess failed messages. Get to know the different web services that expose the ESB Toolkit features to external applications and how to use them with quick samples. The book ends with a preview to the new version of the toolkit.

6002
Ebook

3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide. A practical guide to creating real-time responsive online 3D games in Silverlight 3 using C#, XBAP WPF, XAML, Balder, and Farseer Physics Engine

Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plug-in that enables the animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight is a great (and growing) RIA platform and games are the next level to exploit in it. But it doesn't offer 3D capabilities out of the box and integrating a 3D engine can involve lot of complex mathematics and matrix algebra. This book will help C# developers to get their fingers on the pulse of 3D in Silverlight.This book uses Balder, an open source 3D engine offering 3D capabilities for Silverlight 3. It leaves out boring matrix algebra and complex 3D mathematics. By the end of the book you will have explored the entire engine, and will be able to design and program your own 3D games with ease!The book begins by introducing you to the fundamental concepts of 2D games and then drives you into the 3D world, using easy-to-follow, step-by-step examples. The book employs amazing graphics and impressive performance, and increasingly adds more features to a 3D game giving you a rich interactive experience.By following the practical examples in this book, you will learn the important concepts, from the creation of the initial models, up to the addition of physics and artificial intelligence.The book helps you to provide realistic behaviors for 3D characters by enveloping models with different textures, using lights to create effects, animating multiple 3D characters using a physics engine (Farseer Physics Engine), and simulating real-life physics. Videos, music, and sounds associated with specific events offer the final touches to the 3D game development learning experience.

6003
Ebook

Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers. The ultimate guide to creating games with Unity and Microsoft Game Stack

Jiadong Chen, Ed Price

Understand what makes Unity the world’s most widely used real-time 3D development platform and explore its powerful features for creating 3D and 2D games, as well as the Unity game engine and the Microsoft Game Dev, including the Microsoft Azure Cloud and Microsoft Azure PlayFab services, to create games.You will start by getting acquainted with the Unity editor and the basic concepts of Unity script programming with C#. You'll then learn how to use C# code to work with Unity's built-in modules, such as UI, animation, physics, video, and audio, and understand how to develop a game with Unity and C#. As you progress through the chapters, you'll cover advanced topics such as the math involved in computer graphics and how to create a custom render pipeline in Unity with the new Scriptable Render Pipeline, all while optimizing performance in Unity. Along the way, you'll be introduced to Microsoft Game Dev, Azure services, and Azure PlayFab, and using the Unity3D PlayFab SDK to access the PlayFab API.By the end of this Unity book, you'll have become familiar with the Unity engine and be ready to develop your own games while also addressing the performance issues that you could encounter in the development process.

6004
Ebook

The Aspiring CIO and CISO. A career guide to developing leadership skills, knowledge, experience, and behavior

David J. Gee, Darryl West

Explore the intricacies of CIO and CISO roles with The Aspiring CIO and CISO by David Gee. This book leverages Gee's 20+ years of digital and cyber leadership experience, providing real-world insights, making it a valuable resource for those navigating the evolving landscape of the C-suite.Tailored to entry-level, mid-level, and senior managers looking to advance to the C-suite, this book serves a unique purpose in the realm of career guidance. The narrative speaks directly to individuals uncertain about their readiness for CIO or CISO roles, offering a personal mentorship experience that goes beyond technicalities. Armed with insights into crafting a powerful 90-day plan, you'll be well-equipped to catapult into CIO or CISO roles successfully. Beyond technical proficiency, the book instills survival skills, ensuring longevity and helping you prevent burnout in these pivotal positions. Additionally, by mastering the art of brand development and soft skills, you'll grasp the interpersonal dynamics crucial for executive leadership. This book is an indispensable guide for ambitious professionals, offering foresight and empowerment to thrive in the digital age.By the end of this book, you'll emerge with strategic dexterity, confidently steering your career trajectory towards the C-suite.

6005
Ebook

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM. Find out how to improve business processes with jBPM, and discover how you can begin making a transformative impact as a business analyst in your organization

Matt Cumberlidge, Tom Baeyens

JBoss jBPM is a free, open-source, business process management solution. It enables users to create business processes that coordinate people, applications, and services.A business process is a sequence of activities triggered by a certain input that results in a valuable output. Business Process Management is about analyzing those activities in a structured way and eventually supporting their execution with a workflow application. This allows for the following results:Better management visibility of their business: improved decision makingLow cost of inputs: de-skilled labor requirements, less waste, standardized componentsBetter outputs: consistent quality, more customer satisfactionBusinesses have always tried to manage their processes, but software such as jBPM brings the methodology and management theory to practical life.JBoss jBPM offers the following key features:Graphical process definitionFlexibility to integrate code into the graphical process definitionA customizable web-based workflow application that runs the process you’ve definedEasy programming model to extend the graphical process definitionA process-oriented programming model (jPDL) that blends the best of process definition languages and Java.Easy to integrate with other systems through the JBoss middleware suite.

6006
Ebook

Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester. Build your defense against complex attacks

Sagar Rahalkar, Nipun Jaswal

Metasploit is a popular penetration testing framework that has one of the largest exploit databases around. This book will show you exactly how to prepare yourself against the attacks you will face every day by simulating real-world possibilities.This learning path will begin by introducing you to Metasploit and its functionalities. You will learn how to set up and configure Metasploit on various platforms to create a virtual test environment. You will also get your hands on various tools and components and get hands-on experience with carrying out client-side attacks. In the next part of this learning path, you’ll develop the ability to perform testing on various services such as SCADA, databases, IoT, mobile, tablets, and many more services. After this training, we jump into real-world sophisticated scenarios where performing penetration tests are a challenge. With real-life case studies, we take you on a journey through client-side attacks using Metasploit and various scripts built on the Metasploit framework. The final instalment of your learning journey will be covered through a bootcamp approach. You will be able to bring together the learning together and speed up and integrate Metasploit with leading industry tools for penetration testing. You’ll finish by working on challenges based on user’s preparation and work towards solving the challenge. The course provides you with highly practical content explaining Metasploit from the following Packt books:1. Metasploit for Beginners 2. Mastering Metasploit, Second Edition3. Metasploit Bootcamp

6007
Ebook

Instant RESS Implementation How-to. Take your responsive websites to the next level with server-side components

Chip Lambert

The web design industry has changed dramatically in the last year. Everything that was common practice before is now outdated and everyone is clambering to keep up. Get ahead of the curve with the future of responsive web design, RESS. Responsive Web design with Server Side components gives you the best of both worlds. Instant RESS Implementation How-to is an introduction to using server-side languages such as PHP to build a website that can easily adapt to whatever device the user visits your site with. You will no longer need a specific mobile site. RESS means saying goodbye to .m and .mobi forever.Instant RESS Implementation How-to will teach you everything you need to get started with RESS and start on the journey to becoming a better web developer. It looks at a new way to build mobile websites that can still have the look and functionality of a normal website.You will learn how to use PHP along with Modernizr and WURFL to build dynamic websites that deliver different content dependent on the devices being used.If you want a website that is truly ahead of the curve, then this is the book for you.

6008
Ebook

In-Memory Analytics with Apache Arrow. Perform fast and efficient data analytics on both flat and hierarchical structured data

Matthew Topol, Wes McKinney

Apache Arrow is designed to accelerate analytics and allow the exchange of data across big data systems easily.In-Memory Analytics with Apache Arrow begins with a quick overview of the Apache Arrow format, before moving on to helping you to understand Arrow’s versatility and benefits as you walk through a variety of real-world use cases. You'll cover key tasks such as enhancing data science workflows with Arrow, using Arrow and Apache Parquet with Apache Spark and Jupyter for better performance and hassle-free data translation, as well as working with Perspective, an open source interactive graphical and tabular analysis tool for browsers. As you advance, you'll explore the different data interchange and storage formats and become well-versed with the relationships between Arrow, Parquet, Feather, Protobuf, Flatbuffers, JSON, and CSV. In addition to understanding the basic structure of the Arrow Flight and Flight SQL protocols, you'll learn about Dremio’s usage of Apache Arrow to enhance SQL analytics and discover how Arrow can be used in web-based browser apps. Finally, you'll get to grips with the upcoming features of Arrow to help you stay ahead of the curve.By the end of this book, you will have all the building blocks to create useful, efficient, and powerful analytical services and utilities with Apache Arrow.

6009
Ebook

Data Modeling with Snowflake. A practical guide to accelerating Snowflake development using universal data modeling techniques

Serge Gershkovich, Kent Graziano

The Snowflake Data Cloud is one of the fastest-growing platforms for data warehousing and application workloads. Snowflake's scalable, cloud-native architecture and expansive set of features and objects enables you to deliver data solutions quicker than ever before.Yet, we must ensure that these solutions are developed using recommended design patterns and accompanied by documentation that’s easily accessible to everyone in the organization.This book will help you get familiar with simple and practical data modeling frameworks that accelerate agile design and evolve with the project from concept to code. These universal principles have helped guide database design for decades, and this book pairs them with unique Snowflake-native objects and examples like never before – giving you a two-for-one crash course in theory as well as direct application.By the end of this Snowflake book, you’ll have learned how to leverage Snowflake’s innovative features, such as time travel, zero-copy cloning, and change-data-capture, to create cost-effective, efficient designs through time-tested modeling principles that are easily digestible when coupled with real-world examples.

6010
Ebook

Practical Serverless and Microservices with C#. Build resilient and secure microservices with the .NET stack and embrace serverless development in Azure

Gabriel Baptista, Francesco Abbruzzese

From the authors of the Software Architecture with C# and .NET series comes this practical and grounded showcase of microservices using the .NET stack. Written for .NET developers entering the world of modern cloud and distributed applications, it shows you when microservices and serverless architectures are the right choice for building scalable enterprise solutions and when they’re not. You’ll gain a realistic understanding of their use cases and limitations. Rather than promoting microservices as a one-size-fits-all solution, it encourages thoughtful adoption based on real-world needs.Following a brief introduction and important setup, the book helps you prepare for practical application through examples such as a ride-sharing website. You’ll work with Docker, Kubernetes, Azure Container Apps, and the new .NET Aspire with considerations for security, observability, and cost management. The book culminates in a complete event-driven application that brings together everything you've covered.By the end of the book, you’ll have a well-rounded understanding of cloud and distributed .NET—viewed through the lens of two industry veterans.

6011
Ebook

Software Test Design. Write comprehensive test plans to uncover critical bugs in web, desktop, and mobile apps

Simon Amey

Software Test Design details best practices for testing software applications and writing comprehensive test plans. Written by an expert with over twenty years of experience in the high-tech industry, this guide will provide you with training and practical examples to improve your testing skills.Thorough testing requires a thorough understanding of the functionality under test, informed by exploratory testing and described by a detailed functional specification. This book is divided into three sections, the first of which will describe how best to complete those tasks to start testing from a solid foundation.Armed with the feature specification, functional testing verifies the visible behavior of features by identifying equivalence partitions, boundary values, and other key test conditions. This section explores techniques such as black- and white-box testing, trying error cases, finding security weaknesses, improving the user experience, and how to maintain your product in the long term.The final section describes how best to test the limits of your application. How does it behave under failure conditions and can it recover? What is the maximum load it can sustain? And how does it respond when overloaded?By the end of this book, you will know how to write detailed test plans to improve the quality of your software applications.

6012
Ebook

Matplotlib for Python Developers. Effective techniques for data visualization with Python - Second Edition

Aldrin Yim, Claire Chung, Allen Yu

Python is a general-purpose programming language increasingly being used for data analysis and visualization. Matplotlib is a popular data visualization package in Python used to design effective plots and graphs. This is a practical, hands-on resource to help you visualize data with Python using the Matplotlib library. Matplotlib for Python Developers, Second Edition shows you how to create attractive graphs, charts, and plots using Matplotlib. You will also get a quick introduction to third-party packages, Seaborn, Pandas, Basemap, and Geopandas, and learn how to use them with Matplotlib. After that, you’ll embed and customize your plots in third-party tools such as GTK+3, Qt 5, and wxWidgets. You’ll also be able to tweak the look and feel of your visualization with the help of practical examples provided in this book. Further on, you’ll explore Matplotlib 2.1.x on the web, from a cloud-based platform using third-party packages such as Django. Finally, you will integrate interactive, real-time visualization techniques into your current workflow with the help of practical real-world examples.By the end of this book, you’ll be thoroughly comfortable with using the popular Python data visualization library Matplotlib 2.1.x and leveraging its power to build attractive, insightful, and powerful visualizations.

6013
Ebook

Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure. Re-architect and rebuild your applications using cloud-native technologies

Sjoukje Zaal, Amit Malik, Sander Rossel, Jason Marston, ...

Whether you are trying to re-architect a legacy app or build a cloud-ready app from scratch, using the Azure ecosystem with .NET and Java technologies helps you to strategize and plan your app modernization process effectively. With this book, you’ll learn how to modernize your applications by using Azure for containerization, DevOps, microservices, and serverless solutions to reduce development time and costs, while also making your applications robust, secure, and scalable.You will delve into improving application efficiency by using container services such as Azure Container Service, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and more. Next, you will learn to modernize your application by implementing DevOps throughout your application development life cycle. You will then focus on increasing the scalability and performance of your overall application with microservices, before learning how to add extra functionality to your application with Azure serverless solutions. Finally, you’ll get up to speed with monitoring and troubleshooting techniques.By the end of this book, you will have learned how to use the Azure ecosystem to refactor, re-architect, and rebuild your web, mobile, and desktop applications.

6014
Ebook

The PEAR Installer Manifesto. The PEAR Installer maintainer shows you the power of this code management and deployment system to revolutionize your PHP application development

Gregory Beaver

PEAR stands for PHP Extension and Application Repository, and its primary purpose is to support code re-use. PEAR provides both an advanced installer and a code repository at https://pear.php.net. PEAR code is organized into discrete re-usable components called packages. A package consists of a group of files and a descriptor file called package.xml that contains metadata about the package's contents, such as the package version, any special dependencies, and textual information such as the package description and authors.The software that transforms a package from an inert grouping of files into a dynamic software package is called the PEAR Installer and is itself a PEAR package. In other words, the PEAR Installer can be used to upgrade itself. It truly is a very powerful application. In short, the PEAR Installer is one of the most effective tools for managing a high-quality software library, high-quality applications, or high-quality websites.This book will show you a new way of organizing your PHP development, by leveraging the full power of the PEAR Installer. In a sense, the PEAR Installer is a step above a software design pattern, a meta-development pattern that can be used to systematically organize all of your PHP development.You will learn how to organize your code into packages using the package.xml format. You will learn about the revolutionary new PEAR Channel concept, and how to safely and reliably depend on external PHP libraries from sources such as pear.php.net and other PEAR channels. You will learn about the PEAR_PackageFileManager package, and how to customize individual installations of your PHP code through file roles, file tasks, and post-installation scripts.In addition, you will learn how to use the power of PEAR to manage your web projects with the PEAR installer to bring the power of versioning and rollbacks to your live website. The synergy of the PEAR Installer and a revision control system like CVS or Subversion is also explored in depth.Next, you will learn how to set up your own PEAR Channel for distributing PHP applications, both open-source and proprietary closed-source PHP applications that can be secured using technology already built into the PEAR Installer.Finally, you will learn how to embed the PEAR Installer inside your own web application in order to manage plug-ins from a remote server. The book covers in detail designing a custom plug-in system for a fictitious blog application. The plug-in system is used to manage templates, and the PEAR Installer is used to manage the details of querying the remote server for templates, handling dependencies between versioning, and doing the actual installation process as well.

6015
Ebook

Applying Math with Python. Over 70 practical recipes for solving real-world computational math problems - Second Edition

Sam Morley

The updated edition of Applying Math with Python will help you solve complex problems in a wide variety of mathematical fields in simple and efficient ways. Old recipes have been revised for new libraries and several recipes have been added to demonstrate new tools such as JAX.You'll start by refreshing your knowledge of several core mathematical fields and learn about packages covered in Python's scientific stack, including NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib. As you progress, you'll gradually get to grips with more advanced topics of calculus, probability, and networks (graph theory). Once you’ve developed a solid base in these topics, you’ll have the confidence to set out on math adventures with Python as you explore Python's applications in data science and statistics, forecasting, geometry, and optimization. The final chapters will take you through a collection of miscellaneous problems, including working with specific data formats and accelerating code.By the end of this book, you'll have an arsenal of practical coding solutions that can be used and modified to solve a wide range of practical problems in computational mathematics and data science.

6016
Ebook

Data Labeling in Machine Learning with Python. Explore modern ways to prepare labeled data for training and fine-tuning ML and generative AI models

Vijaya Kumar Suda

Data labeling is the invisible hand that guides the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In today’s data-driven world, mastering data labeling is not just an advantage, it’s a necessity. Data Labeling in Machine Learning with Python empowers you to unearth value from raw data, create intelligent systems, and influence the course of technological evolution.With this book, you'll discover the art of employing summary statistics, weak supervision, programmatic rules, and heuristics to assign labels to unlabeled training data programmatically. As you progress, you'll be able to enhance your datasets by mastering the intricacies of semi-supervised learning and data augmentation. Venturing further into the data landscape, you'll immerse yourself in the annotation of image, video, and audio data, harnessing the power of Python libraries such as seaborn, matplotlib, cv2, librosa, openai, and langchain. With hands-on guidance and practical examples, you'll gain proficiency in annotating diverse data types effectively.By the end of this book, you’ll have the practical expertise to programmatically label diverse data types and enhance datasets, unlocking the full potential of your data.