Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2015 Cookbook. Over 80 hands-on DevOps and ALM-focused recipes for Scrum Teams to enable the Continuous Delivery of high-quality Software.. Faster!

Tarun Arora

Team Foundation Server (TFS) allows you to manage code repositories, build processes, test infrastructure, and deploy labs. TFS supports your team, enabling you to connect, collaborate, and deliver on time. Microsoft's approach to Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) provides a flexible and agile environment that adapts to the needs of your team, removes barriers between roles, and streamlines processes.The book introduces you to creating and setting up team projects for scrum teams. You'll explore various source control repositories, branching, and merging activities, along with a demonstration of how to embed quality into every code check-in. Then, you'll discover agile project planning and management tools. Later, emphasis is given to the testing and release management features of TFS which facilitate the automation of the release pipeline in order to create potentially shippable increments. By the end of the book, you'll have learned to extend and customize TFS plugins to incorporate them into other platforms and enable teams to manage the software lifecycle effectively.

Node.js Blueprints. Develop stunning web and desktop applications with the definitive Node.js

Krasimir Stefanov Tsonev

Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source. How to setup, configure and manage your Linux firewall, web proxy, DHCP, DNS, time server, and VPN with this powerful Open Source solution

Barrie Dempster, James Eaton-Lee

IPCop is a powerful, open source, Linux based firewall distribution for primarily Small Office Or Home (SOHO) networks, although it can be used in larger networks. It provides most of the features that you would expect a modern firewall to have, and what is most important is that it sets this all up for you in a highly automated and simplified way.This book is an easy introduction to this popular application. After introducing and explaining the foundations of firewalling and networking and why they're important, the book moves on to cover using IPCop, from installing it, through configuring it, to more advanced features, such as configuring IPCop to work as an IDS, VPN and using it for bandwidth management. While providing necessary theoretical background, the book takes a practical approach, presenting sample configurations for home users, small businesses, and large businesses. The book contains plenty of illustrative examples.

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.

Democratizing Artificial Intelligence with UiPath. Expand automation in your organization to achieve operational efficiency and high performance

Fanny Ip, Jeremiah Crowley, Tom Torlone

Artificial intelligence (AI) enables enterprises to optimize business processes that are probabilistic, highly variable, and require cognitive abilities with unstructured data. Many believe there is a steep learning curve with AI, however, the goal of our book is to lower the barrier to using AI. This practical guide to AI with UiPath will help RPA developers and tech-savvy business users learn how to incorporate cognitive abilities into business process optimization. With the hands-on approach of this book, you'll quickly be on your way to implementing cognitive automation to solve everyday business problems.Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, this book will help you understand the power of AI and give you an overview of the relevant out-of-the-box models. You’ll learn about cognitive AI in the context of RPA, the basics of machine learning, and how to apply cognitive automation within the development lifecycle. You’ll then put your skills to test by building three use cases with UiPath Document Understanding, UiPath AI Center, and Druid.By the end of this AI book, you'll be able to build UiPath automations with the cognitive capabilities of intelligent document processing, machine learning, and chatbots, while understanding the development lifecycle.

High Performance with Laravel Octane. Learn to fine-tune and optimize PHP and Laravel apps using Octane and an asynchronous approach

Roberto Butti

Laravel Octane is a very powerful component in the Laravel ecosystem that can help you achieve remarkable app performance. With Laravel Octane, you will find tools (queues, cache, and tables) that facilitate a new asynchronous approach for improving application performance.This book highlights how Laravel Octane works, what steps to take in designing an application from the start, what tools you have at your disposal, and how to set up production environments. It provides complete coverage of the strategies, tools, and best practices to make your apps scalable and performant. This is especially important as optimization is usually the overlooked part in the application development lifecycle. You will explore the asynchronous approach in Laravel and be able to release high-performing applications that have a positive impact on the end-user experience.By the end of this book, you will find yourself designing, developing, and releasing high-performance applications.

Python Architecture Patterns. Master API design, event-driven structures, and package management in Python

Jaime Buelta

Developing large-scale systems that continuously grow in scale and complexity requires a thorough understanding of how software projects should be implemented. Software developers, architects, and technical management teams rely on high-level software design patterns such as microservices architecture, event-driven architecture, and the strategic patterns prescribed by domain-driven design (DDD) to make their work easier.This book covers these proven architecture design patterns with a forward-looking approach to help Python developers manage application complexity—and get the most value out of their test suites.Starting with the initial stages of design, you will learn about the main blocks and mental flow to use at the start of a project. The book covers various architectural patterns like microservices, web services, and event-driven structures and how to choose the one best suited to your project. Establishing a foundation of required concepts, you will progress into development, debugging, and testing to produce high-quality code that is ready for deployment. You will learn about ongoing operations on how to continue the task after the system is deployed to end users, as the software development lifecycle is never finished.By the end of this Python book, you will have developed architectural thinking: a different way of approaching software design, including making changes to ongoing systems.

Databricks Certified Associate Developer for Apache Spark Using Python. The ultimate guide to getting certified in Apache Spark using practical examples with Python

Saba Shah, Rod Waltermann

Spark has become a de facto standard for big data processing. Migrating data processing to Spark saves resources, streamlines your business focus, and modernizes workloads, creating new business opportunities through Spark’s advanced capabilities. Written by a senior solutions architect at Databricks, with experience in leading data science and data engineering teams in Fortune 500s as well as startups, this book is your exhaustive guide to achieving the Databricks Certified Associate Developer for Apache Spark certification on your first attempt.You’ll explore the core components of Apache Spark, its architecture, and its optimization, while familiarizing yourself with the Spark DataFrame API and its components needed for data manipulation. You’ll also find out what Spark streaming is and why it’s important for modern data stacks, before learning about machine learning in Spark and its different use cases. What’s more, you’ll discover sample questions at the end of each section along with two mock exams to help you prepare for the certification exam.By the end of this book, you’ll know what to expect in the exam and gain enough understanding of Spark and its tools to pass the exam. You’ll also be able to apply this knowledge in a real-world setting and take your skillset to the next level.

Flash with Drupal. Build dynamic, content-rich Flash CS3 and CS4 applications for Drupal 6

Travis Tidwell, Dries Buytaert

Due to its power and expandability, Drupal has become one of the most popular open source content management systems. At the same time, Flash has been adopted for its ability to create beautiful and dynamic web applications. By combining these technologies, you can create Flash applications that are both visually stunning and rich in content.This book is an in depth discussion and tutorial on how to integrate Flash applications with Drupal CMS. It will describe the best techniques and practices for integrating Flash technology with the power and flexibility of Drupal by building real-life Flash applications.Within this book, you will learn how to build Flash applications that show text from within Drupal and also present images, music, and video within a single Flash application. You will also be able to take advantage of the expandable fields and content filtering provided from the CCK and Views modules to add flexibility and power to your Flash applications. Finally, you will learn how to add your own custom functionality to Drupal and then utilize that from within your Flash applications leaving you with a world of possibilities.This book starts out with a simple introduction to Flash and Drupal technology where you will create a simple Flash application and then embed that within Drupal. From there, each subsequent chapter builds on the previous chapters tackling a new and challenging task.For each new task, you will take a step-by-step approach to building a real-life application that utilizes the feature introduced within that chapter. You will also explore alternative design approaches that will eliminate the current design challenges that developers face when building Flash-driven Drupal sites; and all this while staying true to the Object Oriented Principles that govern the foundation of the ActionScript 3 language. By the end of this book, you will be able to apply all the lessons learned from this book to any other use case you may encounter.

Mobile DevOps Playbook. A practical guide for delivering high-quality mobile applications like a pro

Moataz Nabil

To build mobile apps, you need to understand mobile-first features, tools, and processes that help you build, test, and release robust apps faster and more efficiently. The multitude of challenges stemming from mobile development's inherent complexities, including native iOS and Android app creation, cross-platform frameworks, and the implementation of scalable architectures within extensive teams, collectively contribute to a substantial number of obstacles that can significantly prolong the release process.This book will help you understand and implement the best practices of mobile DevOps for continuous integration, testing, delivery, deployment, and monitoring. You’ll explore different challenges faced by developers due to varied OSs, the unforgiving nature of mobile applications, and continuous updates to mobile phones and learn how to maneuver through these challenges. You’ll also get to grips with the latest trends while discovering the potential future of mobile DevOps, with valuable insights and guidance about integrating mobile development teams into your organization.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to successfully implement mobile DevOps and build fast, qualitative, and efficient mobile apps for your team or organization.

Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook. Master the art of Shader programming to bring life to your Unity projects

Alan Zucconi

Since their introduction to Unity, Shaders have been notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games: complex mathematics have always stood in the way of creating your own Shaders and attaining that level of realism you crave. With Shaders, you can transform your game into a highly polished, refined product with Unity’s post-processing effects.Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook is the first of its kind to bring you the secrets of creating Shaders for Unity3D—guiding you through the process of understanding vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and also how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math.We’ll start with essential lighting and finishing up by creating stunning screen Effects just like those in high quality 3D and mobile games. You’ll discover techniques including normal mapping, image-based lighting, and how to animate your models inside a Shader. We’ll explore the secrets behind some of the most powerful techniques, such as physically based rendering! With Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow.

Data Science Projects with Python. A case study approach to successful data science projects using Python, pandas, and scikit-learn

Stephen Klosterman

Data Science Projects with Python is designed to give you practical guidance on industry-standard data analysis and machine learning tools, by applying them to realistic data problems. You will learn how to use pandas and Matplotlib to critically examine datasets with summary statistics and graphs, and extract the insights you seek to derive. You will build your knowledge as you prepare data using the scikit-learn package and feed it to machine learning algorithms such as regularized logistic regression and random forest. You’ll discover how to tune algorithms to provide the most accurate predictions on new and unseen data. As you progress, you’ll gain insights into the working and output of these algorithms, building your understanding of both the predictive capabilities of the models and why they make these predictions.By then end of this book, you will have the necessary skills to confidently use machine learning algorithms to perform detailed data analysis and extract meaningful insights from unstructured data.

AWS Certified Developer Associate Certification and Beyond. A comprehensive guide to help you succeed in the AWS DVA-C02 certification exam

Rajesh Daswani, Dorian Richard

Becoming an AWS Certified Developer is a rewarding, but challenging endeavor. With AWS’ vast capabilities and abundant resources, finding the right study material and a clear path to success can be daunting. AWS Certified Developer Associate Certification and Beyond is a one-stop guide that not only sets you up for success in the exam, but also lays the foundations for a fulfilling career in the world's most popular cloud infrastructure.This in-depth guide covers everything you need to know to pass the AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam and allows you to test yourself as you go, with knowledge checks throughout the book. You will learn to configure Elastic Load Balancing for high availability, monitor your applications with CloudWatch, and integrate authentication with Amazon Cognito.Additionally, this book grants lifetime access to online exam resources, including mock exams with exam-like timers, detailed solutions, flashcards, and invaluable exam tips, all accessible across PCs, tablets, and smartphones.By the end, you'll be ready to ace the exam and elevate your AWS application development and management skills, positioning yourself for career advancement.

Business Intelligence Career Master Plan. Launch and advance your BI career with proven techniques and actionable insights

Eduardo Chavez, Danny Moncada, Ravi Bapna

Navigating the challenging path of a business intelligence career requires you to consider your expertise, interests, and skills. Business Intelligence Career Master Plan explores key skills like stacks, coursework, certifications, and interview advice, enabling you to make informed decisions about your BI journey.You’ll start by assessing the different roles in BI and matching your skills and career with the tech stack. You’ll then learn to build taxonomy and a data story using visualization types. Additionally, you’ll explore the fundamentals of programming, frontend development, backend development, software development lifecycle, and project management, giving you a broad view of the end-to-end BI process. With the help of the author’s expert advice, you’ll be able to identify what subjects and areas of study are crucial and would add significant value to your skill set.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to make an informed decision on which of the myriad paths to choose in your business intelligence journey based on your skill set and interests.

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.

Getting Started with MariaDB. Explore the powerful features of MariaDB with practical examples

Daniel Bartholomew

MariaDB is a database that has become very popular in the few short years that it has been around. It does not require a big server or expensive support contract. It is also powerful enough to be the database of choice for some of the biggest and most popular websites in the world, taking full advantage of the latest computing hardware available.From installing and configuring through basic usage and maintenance, each chapter in this revised and expanded guide leads on sequentially and logically from the one before it, introducing topics in their natural order so you learn what you need, when you need it. The book is based on the latest release of MariaDB and covers all the latest features and functions. By the end of this beginner-friendly book, not only will you have a running installation of MariaDB, but you will have practical, hands-on experience in the basics of how to install, configure, administer, use, and maintain it.

Unity Game Development Scripting. Write efficient C# scripts to create modular key game elements that are usable for any kind of Unity project

Kyle D'Aoust

Migrating Linux to Microsoft Azure. A hands-on guide to efficiently relocating your Linux workload to Azure

Rithin Skaria, Toni Willberg

With cloud adoption at the core of digital transformation for organizations, there has been a significant demand for deploying and hosting enterprise business workloads in the cloud. Migrating Linux to Microsoft Azure offers a wealth of actionable insights into deploying Linux workload to Azure.You'll begin by learning about the history of IT, operating systems, Unix, Linux, and Windows before moving on to look at the cloud and what things were like before virtualization. This will help anyone new to Linux become familiar with the terms used throughout the book. You'll then explore popular Linux distributions, including RHEL 7, RHEL 8, SLES, Ubuntu Pro, CentOS 7, and more.As you progress, you'll cover the technical details of Linux workloads such as LAMP, Java, and SAP, and understand how to assess your current environment and prepare for your migration to Azure through cloud governance and operations planning. Finally, you'll go through the execution of a real-world migration project and learn how to analyze and debug some common problems that Linux on Azure users may encounter.By the end of this Linux book, you'll be proficient at performing an effective migration of Linux workloads to Azure for your organization.

Real-World Edge Computing. Scale, secure, and succeed in the realm of edge computing with Open Horizon

Robert High, Sanjeev Gupta

Edge computing holds vast potential to revolutionize industries, yet its implementation poses unique challenges. Written by industry veterans Rob High and Sanjeev Gupta, this comprehensive guide bridges the gap between theory and practice. Distilling expertise from their combined decades of experience in edge computing and hybrid cloud mesh solutions, this book equips software developers and DevOps teams with the knowledge and skills needed to deploy edge solutions at scale in production environments. It also explores foundational standards and introduces key factors that may impede the scaling of edge solutions.While edge computing draws from the successes of cloud computing, crucial distinctions separate the two. High and Gupta elucidate these distinctions, helping you grasp the nuanced dynamics of edge-computing ecosystems. With a focus on leveraging Open Horizon to overcome pitfalls and optimize performance, this book will help you confidently navigate the intricacies of constructing and deploying resilient edge solutions in real-world production settings.By the end of this book, you’ll have acquired a deep understanding of essential success factors for building and deploying robust edge solutions in real-world production settings, leveraging Open Horizon for scalable edge deployments.

Full Stack FastAPI, React, and MongoDB. Fast-paced web app development with the FARM stack - Second Edition

Marko Aleksendrić, Shrey Batra, Rachelle Palmer, Shubham Ranjan

Discover how to harness the power of the FARM stack—FastAPI, React, and MongoDB—to develop production-ready web applications of varying complexity. Written by a team of industry experts, including MongoDB champions and product leaders, this fast-paced, hands-on guide equips beginners with essential skills to build web applications efficiently.Introducing each element of the stack, the book demonstrates how to seamlessly integrate them to create a medium-sized web application. You'll set up MongoDB as a document store, construct a simple API with FastAPI, and build an application using React. The guide also covers enhancing application security through authentication and authorization with JSON Web Tokens.Beyond mastering the stack, you'll get to grips with integrating Large Language Models (like ChatGPT) for advanced functionality, such as automated email sending. Additionally, you'll learn how to make the most of Next.js 14, a robust full-stack framework offering improved developer experience.By the end of the book, you'll have created functional applications and gained the foundation to explore diverse and more specialized domains, expanding your development horizons.

QlikView for Finance. Concoct dynamic business intelligence dashboards for financial analysis with QlikView

B Diane Blackwood, Diane B Blackwood

This book is an effective step-by-step tutoring guide for financial analysis using Qlikview.It begins by teaching you the crucial concepts of Qlikview Finance to help you develop an effective understanding of financial data analysis and finance. The book then goes on to cover real-world, practical examples on the use of Qlikview for financial planning and analysis, expense management, risk management, and more. Moving on, topics such as Asset Management QlikView Dashboard and Retail Sales Analysis are covered in a strategic way. We then shift the focus to deal with the concepts of Inventory, Supply Chain, and Plant Coverage Dashboards. The book then reaches its conclusion by dealing with ways to share your QlikView insights. By the end of this book, you will have a good understanding of how to use Qlikview for numerous applications in finance.

Amazon S3 Cookbook. Over 30 hands-on recipes that will get you up and running with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) efficiently

Naoya Hashimoto

Essential PySpark for Scalable Data Analytics. A beginner's guide to harnessing the power and ease of PySpark 3

Sreeram Nudurupati

Apache Spark is a unified data analytics engine designed to process huge volumes of data quickly and efficiently. PySpark is Apache Spark's Python language API, which offers Python developers an easy-to-use scalable data analytics framework.Essential PySpark for Scalable Data Analytics starts by exploring the distributed computing paradigm and provides a high-level overview of Apache Spark. You'll begin your analytics journey with the data engineering process, learning how to perform data ingestion, cleansing, and integration at scale. This book helps you build real-time analytics pipelines that help you gain insights faster. You'll then discover methods for building cloud-based data lakes, and explore Delta Lake, which brings reliability to data lakes. The book also covers Data Lakehouse, an emerging paradigm, which combines the structure and performance of a data warehouse with the scalability of cloud-based data lakes. Later, you'll perform scalable data science and machine learning tasks using PySpark, such as data preparation, feature engineering, and model training and productionization. Finally, you'll learn ways to scale out standard Python ML libraries along with a new pandas API on top of PySpark called Koalas.By the end of this PySpark book, you'll be able to harness the power of PySpark to solve business problems.

Sculpting in ZBrush Made Simple. Explore powerful modeling and character creation techniques used for VFX, games, and 3D printing

Lukas Kutschera

Embark on a creative journey with ZBrush, the leading software for creating characters, creatures, and props in films, games, and 3D printing. This guide will take you through its powerful yet user-friendly workflows, allowing you to explore its dynamic organic sculpting, painting, and hard-surface modeling tools.The first part of this book is dedicated to helping you become familiar with ZBrush’s user interface and learning the very basics, from sculpting brushes and painting the model with Polypaint to setting up lights and rendering images. You’ll also create a demon bust with the help of ZBrush’s concept sculpting tool, DynaMesh. In the second part, you’ll get to grips with the creation of a humanoid character that is optimized for 3D printing. Focusing on anatomy, poly-modeling, and preparing the model for 3D printing, you’ll acquire the skills essential for sculptors. The final part delves into portrait sculpting, where you’ll learn everything from basic facial anatomy to hair creation with FiberMesh.By the end of this book, you'll have developed the expertise necessary to succeed in the ever-evolving world of 3D character modeling, complemented by portfolio and social media tips for showcasing your standout work.