The Ultimate Roblox Game Building Cookbook. Design immersive experiences with easy-to-follow recipes for world and game development

Taylor Field-Draper, Natasha West

Roblox is a massively popular online gaming platform, but it can be challenging to maneuver for beginners who don’t know where to start, as well as seasoned developers who tend to struggle with limited scripting tools that make transitioning from other platforms such as Unity more difficult.The Ultimate Roblox Game Building Cookbook is an invaluable asset for any Roblox developer looking to take their skills to the next level. With a wide range of recipes, this Roblox book covers everything from the basics of game development on the platform to advanced techniques for creating immersive experiences.As you progress through the chapters, you'll gain a deep understanding of the proper workflow and building methods that will enable you to create extraordinary virtual worlds. You'll gain insights into creating complex game mechanics, such as multiplayer games, working with textures, and special effects in games. This cookbook will also provide you with tips from top Roblox developers, as well as valuable guidance on how to monetize your games and stay up to date with the latest trends in the Roblox development community.By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a comprehensive understanding of Roblox game development and design.

Natural Language Processing with Java. Explore various approaches to organize and extract useful text from unstructured data using Java

Richard M. Reese

Data Engineering with Alteryx. Helping data engineers apply DataOps practices with Alteryx

Paul Houghton

Alteryx is a GUI-based development platform for data analytic applications.Data Engineering with Alteryx will help you leverage Alteryx’s code-free aspects which increase development speed while still enabling you to make the most of the code-based skills you have.This book will teach you the principles of DataOps and how they can be used with the Alteryx software stack. You’ll build data pipelines with Alteryx Designer and incorporate the error handling and data validation needed for reliable datasets. Next, you’ll take the data pipeline from raw data, transform it into a robust dataset, and publish it to Alteryx Server following a continuous integration process.By the end of this Alteryx book, you’ll be able to build systems for validating datasets, monitoring workflow performance, managing access, and promoting the use of your data sources.

Developing Multi-Platform Apps with Visual Studio Code. Get up and running with VS Code by building multi-platform, cloud-native, and microservices-based apps

Ovais Mehboob Ahmed Khan, Khusro Habib, Chris Dias

Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a powerful, lightweight code editor for modern web and cloud development. It is a source code editor that can be used with a variety of programming languages, which works on multiple platforms such as Linux, Windows, and macOS. This book provides extensive coverage of the tools, functionalities, and extensions available within the VS Code environment that will help you build multi-platform apps with ease.You’ll start with the installation of VS Code and learn about various tools and features that are essential for development. Progressing through the chapters, you'll explore the user interface while understanding tips and tricks for increasing productivity. Next, you’ll delve into VS Code extensions and discover how they can make life easier for developers. Later, the book shows you how to develop a sample application with different programming languages, tools, and runtimes to display how VS code can be used effectively for development, before helping you get to grips with source code version management and deployment on Azure with VS Code. Finally, you’ll build on your skills by focusing on remote development with VS Code.By the end of this book, you’ll have the knowledge you need to use Visual Studio Code as your primary tool for software development.

Nginx HTTP Server. Harness the power of Nginx to make the most of your infrastructure and serve pages faster than ever

Clement Nedelcu

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high speed Internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity. This free, open source solution will either come as a full replacement of other software such as Apache, or stand in front of your existing infrastructure to improve its overall speed.This book is a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in different ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, this complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes.This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules so it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.

OpenStack Trove Essentials. Build your own cloud based Database as a Service using OpenStack Trove

Alok Shrivastwa, Sunil Sarat, Doug Shelley, Amrith Kumar

OpenStack has become an extremely popular solution to build public and private clouds with. Database as a Service (DBaaS) enables the delivery of more agile database services at lower costs. Some other benefits of DBaaS are secure database deployments and compliance to standards and best practices. Trove is a DBaaS built on OpenStack and is becoming more popular by the day.Since Trove is one of the most recent projects of OpenStack, DBAs and system administrators can find it difficult to set up and run a DBaaS using OpenStack Trove. This book helps DBAs make that step. We start by introducing you to the concepts of DBaaS and how is it implemented using OpenStack Trove. Following this, we look at implementing OpenStack and deploying Trove. Moving on, you will learn to create guest images to be used with Trove. We then look at how to provision databases in self-service mode, and how to perform administration tasks such as backup and recovery, and fine-tuning databases. At the end of the book, we will examine some advanced features of Trove such as replication.

Managing Data Integrity for Finance. Discover practical data quality management strategies for finance analysts and data professionals

Data integrity management plays a critical role in the success and effectiveness of organizations trying to use financial and operational data to make business decisions. Unfortunately, there is a big gap between the analysis and management of finance data along with the proper implementation of complex data systems across various organizations.The first part of this book covers the important concepts for data quality and data integrity relevant to finance, data, and tech professionals. The second part then focuses on having you use several data tools and platforms to manage and resolve data integrity issues on financial data. The last part of this the book covers intermediate and advanced solutions, including managed cloud-based ledger databases, database locks, and artificial intelligence, to manage the integrity of financial data in systems and databases.After finishing this hands-on book, you will be able to solve various data integrity issues experienced by organizations globally.

Cracking the Data Engineering Interview. Land your dream job with the help of resume-building tips, over 100 mock questions, and a unique portfolio

Kedeisha Bryan, Taamir Ransome

Preparing for a data engineering interview can often get overwhelming due to the abundance of tools and technologies, leaving you struggling to prioritize which ones to focus on. This hands-on guide provides you with the essential foundational and advanced knowledge needed to simplify your learning journey.The book begins by helping you gain a clear understanding of the nature of data engineering and how it differs from organization to organization. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll receive expert advice, practical tips, and real-world insights on everything from creating a resume and cover letter to networking and negotiating your salary. The chapters also offer refresher training on data engineering essentials, including data modeling, database architecture, ETL processes, data warehousing, cloud computing, big data, and machine learning. As you advance, you’ll gain a holistic view by exploring continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD), data security, and privacy. Finally, the book will help you practice case studies, mock interviews, as well as behavioral questions.By the end of this book, you will have a clear understanding of what is required to succeed in an interview for a data engineering role.

Database Design and Modeling with Google Cloud. Learn database design and development to take your data to applications, analytics, and AI

Abirami Sukumaran, Priyanka Vergadia, Bagirathi Narayanan

In the age of lightning-speed delivery, customers want everything developed, built, and delivered at high speed and at scale. Knowledge, design, and choice of database is critical in that journey, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. This book serves as a comprehensive and practical guide for data professionals who want to design and model their databases efficiently. The book begins by taking you through business, technical, and design considerations for databases. Next, it takes you on an immersive structured database deep dive for both transactional and analytical real-world use cases using Cloud SQL, Spanner, and BigQuery. As you progress, you’ll explore semi-structured and unstructured database considerations with practical applications using Firestore, cloud storage, and more. You’ll also find insights into operational considerations for databases and the database design journey for taking your data to AI with Vertex AI APIs and generative AI examples. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed in designing and modeling data and databases for your applications using Google Cloud.

Mastering Active Directory. Deploy and secure infrastructures with Active Directory, Windows Server 2016, and PowerShell - Second Edition

Dishan Francis

Active Directory (AD) is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables inter-operation with other directories. This book will first help you brush up on the AD architecture and fundamentals, before guiding you through core components, such as sites, trust relationships, objects, and attributes. You will then explore AD schemas, LDAP, RMS, and security best practices to understand objects and components and how they can be used effectively. Next, the book will provide extensive coverage of AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016, and help you explore their new features. Furthermore, you will learn to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure and effective manner. You’ll later discover Azure AD Module, and learn to automate administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. All along, this updated second edition will cover content based on the latest version of Active Directory, PowerShell 5.1 and LDAP. By the end of this book, you’ll be well versed with best practices and troubleshooting techniques for improving security and performance in identity infrastructures.

Scalable Application Development with NestJS. Leverage REST, GraphQL, microservices, testing, and deployment for seamless growth

Pacifique Linjanja

In this book, Pacifique Linjanja, a globally recognized software engineer and open-source contributor, shares his deep technical expertise and practical insights from his extensive experience delivering enterprise-level applications to unpack the full potential of NestJS, the cutting-edge Node.js framework.This book covers the core concepts, design patterns, and best practices for building scalable, high-performance applications with NestJS. You’ll learn REST API and GraphQL implementations, harness the power of microservices, and explore real-world case studies, including e-commerce, social networking, and ERP systems. The chapters provide step-by-step guidance for setting up your development environment with TypeScript and npm, structuring projects effectively, and using the Apollo Federation architecture to create efficient GraphQL APIs. This book offers hands-on guidance for testing and debugging APIs, handling exceptions, and validating data using pipes and guards, all while helping you build a complete NestJS application from scratch.By the end, you'll be ready to apply DevOps principles for continuous integration and deployment, as well as secure your NestJS applications using advanced techniques.

Pentesting APIs. A practical guide to discovering, fingerprinting, and exploiting APIs

Maurício Harley

Understanding API security is crucial as APIs form the backbone of modern interconnected applications, making them prime targets for cyberattacks. Drawing on nearly 30 years of cybersecurity experience and an extensive background in network security and forensic analysis, this book provides the knowledge and tools to strengthen your API security practices and protect against cyber threats comprehensively.This book begins by establishing a foundational understanding of APIs, particularly focusing on REST and GraphQL, emphasizing their critical role and potential security vulnerabilities. It guides you through setting up a penetration testing environment to ensure the practical application of concepts. You’ll learn reconnaissance techniques, information-gathering strategies, and the discovery of API vulnerabilities. Authentication and authorization testing are thoroughly explored, covering mechanisms, weaknesses, and methods to bypass security controls. By comprehensively addressing these aspects, the book equips you to understand, identify, and mitigate risks, strengthening API security and effectively minimizing potential attack surfaces.By the end of this book, you’ll have developed practical skills to identify, exploit, and secure APIs against various vulnerabilities and attacks.

Artificial Intelligence By Example. Acquire advanced AI, machine learning, and deep learning design skills - Second Edition

Denis Rothman

AI has the potential to replicate humans in every field. Artificial Intelligence By Example, Second Edition serves as a starting point for you to understand how AI is built, with the help of intriguing and exciting examples.This book will make you an adaptive thinker and help you apply concepts to real-world scenarios. Using some of the most interesting AI examples, right from computer programs such as a simple chess engine to cognitive chatbots, you will learn how to tackle the machine you are competing with. You will study some of the most advanced machine learning models, understand how to apply AI to blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), and develop emotional quotient in chatbots using neural networks such as recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs).This edition also has new examples for hybrid neural networks, combining reinforcement learning (RL) and deep learning (DL), chained algorithms, combining unsupervised learning with decision trees, random forests, combining DL and genetic algorithms, conversational user interfaces (CUI) for chatbots, neuromorphic computing, and quantum computing.By the end of this book, you will understand the fundamentals of AI and have worked through a number of examples that will help you develop your AI solutions.

Engineering Manager's Handbook. An insider’s guide to managing software development and engineering teams

Morgan Evans

Delightful and customer-centric digital products have become an expectation in the world of business. Engineering managers are uniquely positioned to impact the success of these products and the software systems that power them. Skillful managers guide their teams and companies to develop functional and maintainable systems.This book helps you find your footing as an engineering manager, develop your leadership style, balance your time between engineering and managing, build successful engineering teams in different settings, and work within constraints without sacrificing technical standards or team empathy. You’ll learn practical techniques for establishing trust, developing beneficial habits, and creating a cohesive and high-performing engineering team. You’ll discover effective strategies to guide and contribute to your team’s efforts, facilitating productivity and collaboration.By the end of this book, you’ll have the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive as an engineering manager. Whether you’re just starting out in your role or seeking to enhance your leadership capabilities, this handbook will empower you to make a lasting impact and drive success in your organization.

Microsoft Power Apps Cookbook. Become a pro Power Apps maker by applying practical use cases to solve ever-evolving business challenges

Eickhel Mendoza

Microsoft Power Apps Cookbook is a complete resource filled with meticulously crafted recipes to help you build customized business apps that meet ever-changing enterprise demands. You will learn how to design modern apps with the low-code approach in a rapid application development environment by achieving enterprise-wide business agility.

The Ultimate Linux Shell Scripting Guide. Automate, Optimize, and Empower tasks with Linux Shell Scripting

Donald A. Tevault

Dive into the world of Linux shell scripting with this hands-on guide. If you’re comfortable using the command line on Unix or Linux but haven’t fully explored Bash, this book is for you. It’s designed for programmers familiar with languages like Python, JavaScript, or PHP who want to make the most of shell scripting.This isn’t just another theory-heavy book—you’ll learn by doing. Each chapter builds on the last, taking you from shell basics to writing practical scripts that solve real-world problems. With nearly a hundred interactive labs, you’ll gain hands-on experience in automation, system administration, and troubleshooting.While Bash is the primary focus, you'll also get a look at Z Shell and PowerShell, expanding your skills and adaptability. From mastering command redirection and pipelines to writing scripts that work across different Unix-like systems, this book equips you for real-world Linux challenges.By the end, you'll be equipped to write efficient shell scripts that streamline your workflow and improve system automation.

Cybersecurity Attacks ,Äi Red Team Strategies. A practical guide to building a penetration testing program having homefield advantage

Johann Rehberger

It's now more important than ever for organizations to be ready to detect and respond to security events and breaches. Preventive measures alone are not enough for dealing with adversaries. A well-rounded prevention, detection, and response program is required. This book will guide you through the stages of building a red team program, including strategies and homefield advantage opportunities to boost security.The book starts by guiding you through establishing, managing, and measuring a red team program, including effective ways for sharing results and findings to raise awareness. Gradually, you'll learn about progressive operations such as cryptocurrency mining, focused privacy testing, targeting telemetry, and even blue team tooling. Later, you'll discover knowledge graphs and how to build them, then become well-versed with basic to advanced techniques related to hunting for credentials, and learn to automate Microsoft Office and browsers to your advantage. Finally, you'll get to grips with protecting assets using decoys, auditing, and alerting with examples for major operating systems.By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to build, manage, and measure a red team program effectively and be well-versed with the fundamental operational techniques required to enhance your existing skills.

Practical Deep Learning at Scale with MLflow. Bridge the gap between offline experimentation and online production

Yong Liu, Dr. Matei Zaharia

The book starts with an overview of the deep learning (DL) life cycle and the emerging Machine Learning Ops (MLOps) field, providing a clear picture of the four pillars of deep learning: data, model, code, and explainability and the role of MLflow in these areas.From there onward, it guides you step by step in understanding the concept of MLflow experiments and usage patterns, using MLflow as a unified framework to track DL data, code and pipelines, models, parameters, and metrics at scale. You’ll also tackle running DL pipelines in a distributed execution environment with reproducibility and provenance tracking, and tuning DL models through hyperparameter optimization (HPO) with Ray Tune, Optuna, and HyperBand. As you progress, you’ll learn how to build a multi-step DL inference pipeline with preprocessing and postprocessing steps, deploy a DL inference pipeline for production using Ray Serve and AWS SageMaker, and finally create a DL explanation as a service (EaaS) using the popular Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) toolbox.By the end of this book, you’ll have built the foundation and gained the hands-on experience you need to develop a DL pipeline solution from initial offline experimentation to final deployment and production, all within a reproducible and open source framework.

Instant Spring for Android Starter. Leverage Spring for Android to create RESTful and OAuth Android apps

The possibility to connect to remote web services is a key feature for most Android apps. REST (Representational State Transfer) is the most popular architecture to provide web services to mobile devices and others. OAuth has recently become the web's favorite way to authenticate and authorize users and apps, thanks to its capability to re-use popular web platforms accounts (Google, Facebook, Twitter). Spring for Android is an extension of the Spring Framework that aims to simplify the development of native Android applications.Instant Spring for Android Starterr is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear step-by-step exercises, which will help you take advantage of the abstractions offered by Spring for Android with regard to REST (RestTemplate) and OAuth (OAuthTemplate). It will also introduce you to the bases of those architectures and the associated tooling.This book gets you started using Spring for Android, first letting you know how to set up your workspace to include those libraries in your projects (with the Eclipse IDE and also with the popular building tool Maven) and then providing some clear and real life examples of RESTful and OAUth backed Android applications.After introducing the technology, we'll discover the different Message Converters provided (to consume JSON, XML, and Atom web services) and the main HTTP verbs to interact with RESTful webservices: GET, POST, DELETE, and UPDATE. We'll also mention how to support HTTP Basic Auth, Gzip compression, and finally put in practice the OAuth workflow with a concrete example relying on the Google OAuth service provider to authenticate and authorize an app and users.You will learn everything you need to consume RESTful web services, authenticate your users, and interact with their social platforms profiles from your Android app.

Expert Python Programming. Write proffesional, efficient and maintainable code in Python - Second Edition

Michał Jaworski

Python is a dynamic programming language, used in a wide range of domains by programmers who find it simple, yet powerful. Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient and easy to maintain and reuse is a challenge.The focus of the book is to familiarize you with common conventions, best practices, useful tools and standards used by python professionals on a daily basis when working with code.You will begin with knowing new features in Python 3.5 and quick tricks for improving productivity. Next, you will learn advanced and useful python syntax elements brought to this new version. Using advanced object-oriented concepts and mechanisms available in python, you will learn different approaches to implement metaprogramming. You will learn to choose good names, write packages, and create standalone executables easily.You will also be using some powerful tools such as buildout and vitualenv to release and deploy the code on remote servers for production use. Moving on, you will learn to effectively create Python extensions with C, C++, cython, and pyrex. The important factors while writing code such as code management tools, writing clear documentation, and test-driven development are also covered. You will now dive deeper to make your code efficient with general rules of optimization, strategies for finding bottlenecks, and selected tools for application optimization.By the end of the book, you will be an expert in writing efficient and maintainable code.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Cookbook. Protect multicloud and hybrid cloud environments, manage compliance and strengthen security posture

Sasha Kranjac

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a multi-cloud and hybrid cloud security posture management solution that enables security administrators to build cyber defense for their Azure and non-Azure resources by providing both recommendations and security protection capabilities.This book will start with a foundational overview of Microsoft Defender for Cloud and its core capabilities. Then, the reader is taken on a journey from enabling the service, selecting the correct tier, and configuring the data collection, to working on remediation. Next, we will continue with hands-on guidance on how to implement several security features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, finishing with monitoring and maintenance-related topics, gaining visibility in advanced threat protection in distributed infrastructure and preventing security failures through automation.By the end of this book, you will know how to get a view of your security posture and where to optimize security protection in your environment as well as the ins and outs of Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

SQL Server Query Tuning and Optimization. Optimize Microsoft SQL Server 2022 queries and applications

Benjamin Nevarez

SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications.This book starts by describing the inner workings of the query optimizer, and will enable you to use this knowledge to write better queries and provide the query engine with all the information it needs to produce efficient execution plans. As you progress, you’ll get practical query optimization tips for troubleshooting underperforming queries. The book will also guide you through intelligent query processing and what is new in SQL Server 2022. Query performance topics such as the Query Store, In-Memory OLTP and columnstore indexes are covered as well.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to get the best possible performance for your queries and applications.

Mastering Articulate Storyline. Learn how to push Articulate Storyline to its limits and create breath taking stories by deepening your understanding of the product's capabilities!

Ashley Chiasson, Jeffery Batt

Storyline is a powerful e-learning authoring tool that allows you to take your creativity to the next level. However, more often than not, projects don't require such complex interactions, leaving Storyline's full capabilities untapped.This book will provide you with the information you need to take your Storyline development up a notch by leveraging the full suite of possibilities Storyline has to offer.You will be provided with a refresher of the key concepts before we take you deep into the exciting world of enhanced interactivity, variables, and even some JavaScript—oh my! With downloadable activities, you can either follow along and compare your output, use the activities as they are, modify the activities to suit your own needs, or reverse-engineer the activities to better understand how they were developed.

Practical Web Development. Learn CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and more with this vital guide to modern web development

Paul Wellens