Reinforcement Learning with TensorFlow. A beginner's guide to designing self-learning systems with TensorFlow and OpenAI Gym

Sayon Dutta

Reinforcement learning (RL) allows you to develop smart, quick and self-learning systems in your business surroundings. It's an effective method for training learning agents and solving a variety of problems in Artificial Intelligence - from games, self-driving cars and robots, to enterprise applications such as data center energy saving (cooling data centers) and smart warehousing solutions.The book covers major advancements and successes achieved in deep reinforcement learning by synergizing deep neural network architectures with reinforcement learning. You'll also be introduced to the concept of reinforcement learning, its advantages and the reasons why it's gaining so much popularity. You'll explore MDPs, Monte Carlo tree searches, dynamic programming such as policy and value iteration, and temporal difference learning such as Q-learning and SARSA. You will use TensorFlow and OpenAI Gym to build simple neural network models that learn from their own actions. You will also see how reinforcement learning algorithms play a role in games, image processing and NLP.By the end of this book, you will have gained a firm understanding of what reinforcement learning is and understand how to put your knowledge to practical use by leveraging the power of TensorFlow and OpenAI Gym.

Hadoop 2.x Administration Cookbook. Administer and maintain large Apache Hadoop clusters

Aman Singh

Hadoop enables the distributed storage and processing of large datasets across clusters of computers. Learning how to administer Hadoop is crucial to exploit its unique features. With this book, you will be able to overcome common problems encountered in Hadoop administration.The book begins with laying the foundation by showing you the steps needed to set up a Hadoop cluster and its various nodes. You will get a better understanding of how to maintain Hadoop cluster, especially on the HDFS layer and using YARN and MapReduce. Further on, you will explore durability and high availability of a Hadoop cluster. You’ll get a better understanding of the schedulers in Hadoop and how to configure and use them for your tasks. You will also get hands-on experience with the backup and recovery options and the performance tuning aspects of Hadoop. Finally, you will get a better understanding of troubleshooting, diagnostics, and best practices in Hadoop administration.By the end of this book, you will have a proper understanding of working with Hadoop clusters and will also be able to secure, encrypt it, and configure auditing for your Hadoop clusters.

NativeScript for Angular Mobile Development. Creating dynamic mobile apps for iOS and Android

Nathan Walker, Nathanael J. Anderson

NativeScript is an open source framework that is built by Progress in order to build truly native mobile apps with TypeScript, JavaScript or just Angular which is an open source framework built by Google that offers declarative templates, dependency injection, and fully featured modules to build rich applications. Angular’s versatile view handling architecture allows your views to be rendered as highly performant UI components native to iOS and Android mobile platforms. This decoupling of the view rendering layer in Angular combined with the power of native APIs with NativeScript have together created the powerful and exciting technology stack of NativeScript for Angular.This book focuses on the key concepts that you will need to know to build a NativeScript for Angular mobile app for iOS and Android. We’ll build a fun multitrack recording studio app, touching on powerful key concepts from both technologies that you may need to know when you start building an app of your own. The structure of the book takes the reader from a void to a deployed app on both the App Store and Google Play, serving as a reference guide and valuable tips/tricks handbook.By the end of this book, you’ll know majority of key concepts needed to build a successful NativeScript for Angular app.

SQL Server 2016 Developer's Guide. Build efficient database applications for your organization with SQL Server 2016

Milo?° Radivojevifá, Dejan Sarka, William Durkin

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 is considered the biggest leap in the data platform history of the Microsoft, in the ongoing era of Big Data and data science. This book introduces you to the new features of SQL Server 2016 that will open a completely new set of possibilities for you as a developer. It prepares you for the more advanced topics by starting with a quick introduction to SQL Server 2016's new features and a recapitulation of the possibilities you may have already explored with previous versions of SQL Server. The next part introduces you to small delights in the Transact-SQL language and then switches to a completely new technology inside SQL Server - JSON support. We also take a look at the Stretch database, security enhancements, and temporal tables.The last chapters concentrate on implementing advanced topics, including Query Store, column store indexes, and In-Memory OLTP. You will finally be introduced to R and learn how to use the R language with Transact-SQL for data exploration and analysis. By the end of this book, you will have the required information to design efficient, high-performance database applications without any hassle.

Python Programming with Raspberry Pi. Build small yet powerful robots and automation systems with Raspberry Pi Zero

Sai Yamanoor, Srihari Yamanoor

Raspberry Pi Zero is a super-small and super-affordable product from Raspberry Pi that is packed with a plethora of features and has grabbed the notice of programmers, especially those who use Python. This step-by-step guide will get you developing practical applications in Python using a Raspberry Pi Zero. It will become a valuable resource as you learn the essential details of interfacing sensors and actuators to a Raspberry Pi, as well as acquiring and displaying data. You will get started by writing a Python program that blinks an LED at 1-second intervals. Then you will learn to write simple logic to execute tasks based upon sensor data (for example, to control a motor) and retrieve data from the web (such as to check e-mails to provide a visual alert). Finally, you will learn to build a home automation system with Python where different appliances are controlled using the Raspberry Pi. The examples discussed in each chapter of this book culminate in a project that help improve the quality of people’s lives.

Hands-On Kubernetes on Azure. Run your applications securely and at scale on the most widely adopted orchestration platform

Shivakumar Gopalakrishnan, Gunther Lenz

Microsoft is now one of the most significant contributors to Kubernetes open source projects. Kubernetes helps to create, configure, and manage a cluster of virtual machines that are preconfigured to run containerized applications.This book will be your guide to performing successful container orchestration and deployment of Kubernetes clusters on Azure. You will get started by learning how to deploy and manage highly scalable applications, along with understanding how to set up a production-ready Kubernetes cluster on Azure. As you advance, you will learn how to reduce the complexity and operational overheads of managing a Kubernetes cluster on Azure.By the end of this book, you will not only be capable of deploying and managing Kubernetes clusters on Azure with ease, but also have the knowledge of best practices for working with advanced AKS concepts for complex systems.

React 16 Essentials. A fast-paced, hands-on guide to designing and building scalable and maintainable web apps with React 16 - Second Edition

Artemij Fedosejev, Adam Boduch

React 16 Essentials, Second Edition, fully updated for React 16, takes you on a fast-paced journey through building your own maintainable React 16 applications. React experts Artemij Fedosejev and Adam Boduch give you all the essentials you need to know and start working with React 16, in this new edition of the best-selling React.js Essentials title. You'll find the latest React 16 code updates, assessment of React Fiber, new coverage of Redux, and how to work as a modern React developer.The authors offer you their current assessment of React Fiber, and you'll soon be exploring React 16 hands on, creating your own single and multiple user interface elements with React 16. You'll then see how to create stateless and stateful components and make them reactive. You'll also learn to interact between your components and lifecycle methods, and gauge how to effectively integrate your user interface components with other JavaScript libraries. Delve deep into the core elements of the Redux architecture and learn how to manage your application and data persistence. Then go the extra mile with the Jest test framework, and run multiple tests on your applications and find solutions to scale without complexity.Today React is used by Facebook, Instagram, Khan Academy, and Imperial College London, to name a few. Many new users recognize the benefits of React and adopt it in their own projects, forming a fast-growing community. The speed at which React has evolved promises a bright future for anyone who invests in learning it today. Let Artemij and Adam bring you a brand new look at React 16 and React Fiber, and move your web development into the future.

Test-Driven iOS Development with Swift 4. Write Swift code that is maintainable, flexible, and easily extensible - Third Edition

Dr. Dominik Hauser

Test-driven development (TDD) is a proven way to find software bugs early. Writing tests before you code improves the structure and maintainability of your apps. Using TDD, in combination with Swift 4's improved syntax, means there is no longer any excuse for writing bad code.This book will help you understand the process of TDD and how to apply it to your apps written in Swift. Through practical, real-world examples, you’ll learn how to implement TDD in context. You will begin with an overview of the TDD workflow and then delve into unit-testing concepts and code cycles.You will also plan and structure your test-driven iOS app, and write tests to drive the development of view controllers and helper classes. Next, you’ll learn how to write tests for network code and explore how the test-driven approach—in combination with stubs—helps you write network code even before the backend component is finished.Finally, the book will guide you through the next steps to becoming a testing expert by discussing integration tests, Behavior Driven Development (BDD), open source testing frameworks, and UI Tests (introduced in Xcode 9).

Learning Spark SQL. Architect streaming analytics and machine learning solutions

Aurobindo Sarkar

In the past year, Apache Spark has been increasingly adopted for the development of distributed applications. Spark SQL APIs provide an optimized interface that helps developers build such applications quickly and easily. However, designing web-scale production applications using Spark SQL APIs can be a complex task. Hence, understanding the design and implementation best practices before you start your project will help you avoid these problems.This book gives an insight into the engineering practices used to design and build real-world, Spark-based applications. The book's hands-on examples will give you the required confidence to work on any future projects you encounter in Spark SQL.It starts by familiarizing you with data exploration and data munging tasks using Spark SQL and Scala. Extensive code examples will help you understand the methods used to implement typical use-cases for various types of applications. You will get a walkthrough of the key concepts and terms that are common to streaming, machine learning, and graph applications. You will also learn key performance-tuning details including Cost Based Optimization (Spark 2.2) in Spark SQL applications. Finally, you will move on to learning how such systems are architected and deployed for a successful delivery of your project.

Containers in OpenStack. Leverage OpenStack services to make the most of Docker, Kubernetes and Mesos

Madhuri Kumari, Pradeep Kumar Singh

Containers are one of the most talked about technologies of recent times. They have become increasingly popular as they are changing the way we develop, deploy, and run software applications. OpenStack gets tremendous traction as it is used by many organizations across the globe and as containers gain in popularity and become complex, it’s necessary for OpenStack to provide various infrastructure resources for containers, such as compute, network, and storage.Containers in OpenStack answers the question, how can OpenStack keep ahead of the increasing challenges of container technology? You will start by getting familiar with container and OpenStack basics, so that you understand how the container ecosystem and OpenStack work together. To understand networking, managing application services and deployment tools, the book has dedicated chapters for different OpenStack projects: Magnum, Zun, Kuryr, Murano, and Kolla. Towards the end, you will be introduced to some best practices to secure your containers and COE on OpenStack, with an overview of using each OpenStack projects for different use cases.

Installation, Storage, and Compute with Windows Server 2016: Microsoft 70-740 MCSA Exam Guide. Implement and configure storage and compute functionalities in Windows Server 2016

Sasha Kranjac, Vladimir Stefanovic

MCSA: Windows Server 2016 certification is one of the most sought-after certifications for IT professionals, which includes working with Windows Server and performing administrative tasks around it. This book is aimed at the 70-740 certification and is part of Packt's three-book series on MCSA Windows Server 2016 certification, which covers Exam 70-740, Exam 70-741, and Exam 70-742.This book will cover exam objectives for the 70-740 exam, and starting from installing and configuring Windows Server 2016, Windows Server imaging and deployment to configuring and managing disks and volumes, implementing and configuring server storage and implementing Hyper-V. At the end of each chapter you will be provided test questions to revise your learnings which will boost your confidence in preparing for the actual certifications.By the end of this book, you will learn everything needed to pass the, MCSA Exam 70-740: Installation, Storage, and Compute with Windows Server 2016, certification.

DevOps for Salesforce. Build, test, and streamline data pipelines to simplify development in Salesforce

Priyanka Dive, Nagraj Gornalli

Salesforce is one of the top CRM tools used these days, and with its immense functionalities and features, it eases the functioning of an enterprise in various areas of sales, marketing, and finance, among others. Deploying Salesforce applications is a tricky event, and it can get quite taxing for admins and consultants. This book addresses all the problems that you might encounter while trying to deploy your applications and shows you how to resort to DevOps to take these challenges head on.Beginning with an overview of the development and delivery process of a Salesforce app, DevOps for Salesforce covers various types of sandboxing and helps you understand when to choose which type. You will then see how different it is to deploy with Salesforce as compared to deploying with another app. You will learn how to leverage a migration tool and automate deployment using the latest and most popular tools in the ecosystem. This book explores topics such as version control and DevOps techniques such as Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and testing. Finally, the book will conclude by showing you how to track bugs in your application changes using monitoring tools and how to quantify your productivity and ROI.By the end of the book, you will have acquired skills to create, test, and effectively deploy your applications by leveraging the features of DevOps.

Learning Salesforce Visual Workflow and Process Builder. Flows and automation for enhanced business productivity - Second Edition

Rakesh Gupta

Salesforce Management System is an information system used in CRM to automate the business processes like sales and marketing. To implement this, Force.com developed a powerful tool called Visual Workflow to automate business processes by creating applications also called Flows. Learning Salesforce Visual Workflow, Second Edition is a practical guide on Flows that will enable you to develop custom applications in Salesforce with minimized code usage. The book starts with an introduction to Visual Workflows that teaches all the building blocks of creating Flows and use it efficiently. You will learn how to easily automate business processes and tackle complex business scenarios using Flows. The book explains the working of the Process Builder so you can create reusable processes. The book also covers how you can integrate existing or newly created Flows with the Salesforce Lightening Experience. By the end of the book, you will get a clear understanding on how to use Flows and Process Builder in your organization to optimize code usage.

Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook. Over 100 recipes to fully leverage the features of the standard library in Python

Alessandro Molina

The Python 3 Standard Library is a vast array of modules that you can use for developing various kinds of applications. It contains an exhaustive list of libraries, and this book will help you choose the best one to address specific programming problems in Python.The Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook begins with recipes on containers and data structures and guides you in performing effective text management in Python. You will find Python recipes for command-line operations, networking, filesystems and directories, and concurrent execution. You will learn about Python security essentials in Python and get to grips with various development tools for debugging, benchmarking, inspection, error reporting, and tracing. The book includes recipes to help you create graphical user interfaces for your application. You will learn to work with multimedia components and perform mathematical operations on date and time. The recipes will also show you how to deploy different searching and sorting algorithms on your data.By the end of the book, you will have acquired the skills needed to write clean code in Python and develop applications that meet your needs.

Learning Elastic Stack 6.0. A beginner’s guide to distributed search, analytics, and visualization using Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana

Pranav Shukla, Sharath Kumar M N

The Elastic Stack is a powerful combination of tools for distributed search, analytics, logging, and visualization of data from medium to massive data sets. The newly released Elastic Stack 6.0 brings new features and capabilities that empower users to find unique, actionable insights through these techniques. This book will give you a fundamental understanding of what the stack is all about, and how to use it efficiently to build powerful real-time data processing applications.After a quick overview of the newly introduced features in Elastic Stack 6.0, you’ll learn how to set up the stack by installing the tools, and see their basic configurations. Then it shows you how to use Elasticsearch for distributed searching and analytics, along with Logstash for logging, and Kibana for data visualization. It also demonstrates the creation of custom plugins using Kibana and Beats. You’ll find out about Elastic X-Pack, a useful extension for effective security and monitoring. We also provide useful tips on how to use the Elastic Cloud and deploy the Elastic Stack in production environments.On completing this book, you’ll have a solid foundational knowledge of the basic Elastic Stack functionalities. You’ll also have a good understanding of the role of each component in the stack to solve different data processing problems.

Learn Unity ML-Agents - Fundamentals of Unity Machine Learning. Incorporate new powerful ML algorithms such as Deep Reinforcement Learning for games

Micheal Lanham

Unity Machine Learning agents allow researchers and developers to create games and simulations using the Unity Editor, which serves as an environment where intelligent agents can be trained with machine learning methods through a simple-to-use Python API.This book takes you from the basics of Reinforcement and Q Learning to building Deep Recurrent Q-Network agents that cooperate or compete in a multi-agent ecosystem. You will start with the basics of Reinforcement Learning and how to apply it to problems. Then you will learn how to build self-learning advanced neural networks with Python and Keras/TensorFlow. From there you move o n to more advanced training scenarios where you will learn further innovative ways to train your network with A3C, imitation, and curriculum learning models. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to build more complex environments by building a cooperative and competitive multi-agent ecosystem.

Concurrent Patterns and Best Practices. Build scalable apps in Java with multithreading, synchronization and functional programming patterns

Atul S. Khot

Selecting the correct concurrency architecture has a significant impact on the design and performance of your applications. Concurrent design patterns help you understand the different characteristics of parallel architecture to make your code faster and more efficient.This book will help Java developers take a hands-on approach to building scalable and distributed apps by following step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples. You’ll begin with basic concurrency concepts and delve into the patterns used for explicit locking, lock-free programming, futures, and actors.You’ll explore coding with multithreading design patterns, including master, slave, leader, follower, and map-reduce, and then move on to solve problems using synchronizer patterns. You'll even discover the rationale for these patterns in distributed and parallel applications, and understand how future composition, immutability, and the monadic flow help you create more robust code.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to use concurrent design patterns to build high performance applications confidently.

Truffle Quick Start Guide. Learn the fundamentals of Ethereum development

Nikhil Bhaskar

Truffle is a world-class development environment, testing framework and asset pipeline for Ethereum, aiming to make life as an Ethereum developer easier.If you are a web developer wanting to try your hand at developing Dapps with Truffle, then this is the book for you. This book will teach you to write smart contracts and build Dapps with Truffle. You will begin with covering the basics of Truffle, briefly explaining how it integrates Solidity and Web3, in orderto start building a mini decentralized application. Also, you will dive into migration, testing and integrating Truffle with the use of popular JavaScript frameworks. Lastly, you will ship your decentralized application and package it into a product. Moreover, you will go through the best practices in Truffle,so as to increase your proficiency in building Dapps with Truffle.By the end of the book, you will be able to write smart contracts and build decentralized applications with Truffle on Ethereum blockchains.

Hands-On Continuous Integration and Delivery. Build and release quality software at scale with Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI

Jean-Marcel Belmont

Hands-On Continuous Integration and Delivery starts with the fundamentals of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) and where it fits in the DevOps ecosystem. You will explore the importance of stakeholder collaboration as part of CI/CD.As you make your way through the chapters, you will get to grips with Jenkins UI, and learn to install Jenkins on different platforms, add plugins, and write freestyle scripts. Next, you will gain hands-on experience of developing plugins with Jenkins UI, building the Jenkins 2.0 pipeline, and performing Docker integration. In the concluding chapters, you will install Travis CI and Circle CI and carry out scripting, logging, and debugging, helping you to acquire a broad knowledge of CI/CD with Travis CI and CircleCI.By the end of this book, you will have a detailed understanding of best practices for CI/CD systems and be able to implement them with confidence.

Learn Spring for Android Application Development. Build robust Android applications with Kotlin 1.3 and Spring 5

S. M. Mohi Us Sunnat, Igor Kucherenko

As the new official language for Android, Kotlin is attracting new as well as existing Android developers. As most developers are still working with Java and want to switch to Kotlin, they find a combination of these two appealing. This book addresses this interest by bringing together Spring, a widely used Java SE framework for building enterprise-grade applications, and Kotlin.Learn Spring for Android Application Development will guide you in leveraging some of the powerful modules of the Spring Framework to build lightweight and robust Android apps using Kotlin. You will work with various modules, such as Spring AOP, Dependency Injection, and Inversion of Control, to develop applications with better dependency management. You’ll also explore other modules of the Spring Framework, such as Spring MVC, Spring Boot, and Spring Security. Each chapter has practice exercises at the end for you to assess your learning.By the end of the book, you will be fully equipped to develop Android applications with Spring technologies.

DevOps Bootcamp. The fastest way to learn DevOps

Mitesh Soni

DevOps Bootcamp delivers practical learning modules in manageable chunks. Each chunk is delivered in a day, and each day is a productive one. Each day builds your competency in DevOps. You will be able to take the task you learn every day and apply it to cultivate the DevOps culture.Each chapter presents core concepts and key takeaways about a topic in DevOps and provides a series of hands-on exercises. You will not only learn the importance of basic concepts or practices of DevOps but also how to use different tools to automate application lifecycle management. We will start off by building the foundation of the DevOps concepts. On day two, we will perform Continuous Integration using Jenkins and VSTS both by configuring Maven-based JEE Web Application?. We will also integrate Jenkins and Sonar qube for Static Code Analysis. Further, on day three, we will focus on Docker containers where we will install and configure Docker and also create a Tomcat Container to deploy our Java based web application. On day four, we will create and configure the environment for application deployment in AWS and Microsoft Azure Cloud for which we will use Infrastructure as a Service and Open Source Configuration Management tool Chef. For day five, our focus would be on Continuous Delivery. We will automate application deployment in Docker container using Jenkins Plugin, AWS EC2 using Script, AWS Elastic Beanstalk using Jenkins Plugin, Microsoft Azure VM using script, and Microsoft Azure App Services Using Jenkins. We will also configure Continuous Delivery using VSTS. We will then learn the concept of Automated Testing on day six using Apache JMeter and URL-based tests in VSTS. Further, on day seven, we will explore various ways to automate application lifecycle management using orchestration. We will see how Pipeline can be created in Jenkins and VSTS, so the moment Continuous? Integration is completed successfully, Continuous Delivery will start and application will be deployed. On the final day, our focus would be on Security access to Jenkins and Monitoring of CI resources, and cloud-based resources in AWS and Microsoft Azure Platform as a Service.

Mastering Puppet 5. Optimize enterprise-grade environment performance with Puppet

Ryan Russell-Yates, Jason Southgate

Puppet is a configuration management system and a language written for and by system administrators to manage a large number of systems efficiently and prevent configuration drift.The core topics this book addresses are Puppet's latest features and mastering Puppet Enterprise. You will begin by writing a new Puppet module, gaining an understanding of the guidelines and style of the Puppet community. Following on from this, you will take advantage of the roles and profiles pattern, and you will learn how to structure your code. Next, you will learn how to extend Puppet and write custom facts, functions, types, and providers in Ruby, and also use the new features of Hiera 5. You will also learn how to configure the new Code Manager component, and how to ensure code is automatically deployed to (multiple) Puppet servers. Next, you will learn how to integrate Puppet with Jenkins and Git to build an effective workflow for multiple teams, and use the new Puppet Tasks feature and the latest Puppet Orchestrator language extensions. Finally, you will learn how to scale and troubleshoot Puppet.By the end of the book, you will be able to deal with problems of scale and exceptions in your code, automate workflows, and support multiple developers working simultaneously.

Web Development with MongoDB and Node. Build fast web applications for handling any kind of data - Third Edition

Bruno Joseph D'mello

Node.js builds fast, scalable network applications while MongoDB is the perfect fit as a high-performance, open source NoSQL database solution. The combination of these two technologies offers high performance and scalability and helps in building fast, scalable network applications. Together they provide the power for manage any form of data as well as speed of delivery.This book will help you to get these two technologies working together to build web applications quickly and easily, with effortless deployment to the cloud. You will also learn about angular 4, which consumes pure JSON APOIs from a hapi server.The book begins by setting up your development environment, running you through the steps necessary to get the main application server up-and-running. Then you will see how to use Node.js to connect to a MongoDB database and perform data manipulations.From here on, the book will take you through integration with third-party tools to interact with web apps. You will see how to use controllers and view models to generate reusable code that will reduce development time. Toward the end, the book supplies tests to properly execute your code and take your skills to the next level with the most popular frameworks for developing web applications.By the end of the book, you will have a running web application developed with MongoDB, Node.js, and some of the most powerful and popular frameworks.

Learning Python Networking. A complete guide to build and deploy strong networking capabilities using Python 3.7 and Ansible - Second Edition

José Manuel Ortega, Dr. M. O. Faruque Sarker, Sam Washington

Network programming has always been a demanding task. With full-featured and well-documented libraries all the way up the stack, Python makes network programming the enjoyable experience it should be.Starting with a walk through of today's major networking protocols, through this book, you'll learn how to employ Python for network programming, how to request and retrieve web resources, and how to extract data in major formats over the web. You will utilize Python for emailing using different protocols, and you'll interact with remote systems and IP and DNS networking. You will cover the connection of networking devices and configuration using Python 3.7, along with cloud-based network management tasks using Python.As the book progresses, socket programming will be covered, followed by how to design servers, and the pros and cons of multithreaded and event-driven architectures. You'll develop practical clientside applications, including web API clients, email clients, SSH, and FTP. These applications will also be implemented through existing web application frameworks.