The Definitive Guide to Power Query (M). Mastering complex data transformation with Power Query

Gregory Deckler, Rick de Groot, Melissa de Korte, Brian Julius

Data transformation is a critical step in building data models and business intelligence reports. Power Query is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to master data transformation, and this book will equip you with the knowledge and skills to make the most of it.The Definitive Guide to Power Query (M) will help you build a solid foundation in the Power Query M language. As you progress through the chapters, you'll learn how to use that knowledge to implement advanced concepts and data transformations. This will set the stage for an uncompromisingly thorough exploration of the Power Query M Language. You'll also get to grips with optimizing performance, handling errors, and implementing efficient data processing techniques. As this is a hands-on guide, the practical examples in the chapters will help you gain the skills to apply Power Query to real-world problems and improve your data analysis capabilities.By the end of this book, you will be able to leverage all of Power Query's remarkable capabilities for data transformation.

Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On. Apply modern RL methods to practical problems of chatbots, robotics, discrete optimization, web automation, and more - Second Edition

Maxim Lapan

Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On, Second Edition is an updated and expanded version of the bestselling guide to the very latest reinforcement learning (RL) tools and techniques. It provides you with an introduction to the fundamentals of RL, along with the hands-on ability to code intelligent learning agents to perform a range of practical tasks.With six new chapters devoted to a variety of up-to-the-minute developments in RL, including discrete optimization (solving the Rubik's Cube), multi-agent methods, Microsoft's TextWorld environment, advanced exploration techniques, and more, you will come away from this book with a deep understanding of the latest innovations in this emerging field.In addition, you will gain actionable insights into such topic areas as deep Q-networks, policy gradient methods, continuous control problems, and highly scalable, non-gradient methods. You will also discover how to build a real hardware robot trained with RL for less than $100 and solve the Pong environment in just 30 minutes of training using step-by-step code optimization.In short, Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On, Second Edition, is your companion to navigating the exciting complexities of RL as it helps you attain experience and knowledge through real-world examples.

Sage ACT! 2011 Dashboard and Report Cookbook. Take your Customer Relations Management to new levels of efficiency with the 65+ recipes in this indispensable Cookbook. You’ll be creating and customizing superb dashboards and reports from your Sage ACT! data in no time

Karen Fredricks, Roy Laudenslager

Sage ACT! is the top selling CRM software application, and it helps businesses to centralize contact information, organize their calendars and notes, and ultimately maximize contact relationships to optimize business efficiency and profitability. In ACT! 2011, a variety of new dashboards and reports are available for producing graphical representations of client information and for measuring the success of your sales force.This cookbook is full of practical and immediately applicable recipes that will take you from being an ACT! report and dashboard novice to a report-writing pro in no time. The recipes will show you how to create custom dashboards and reports, as well as utilize the new templates available in recent ACT! versions. You will learn to use ACT!'s Report Editor and Dashboard Designer so that you will be able to easily view important information about your business and your sales force.The recipes begin by covering the most basic elements of the ACT! reports and continue to include several recipes that will guide you through creating brand-new reports. If you have an ACT! database, you need to be able to access it quickly and logically; this book will help you do just that.

HLSL Development Cookbook. Implement stunning 3D rendering techniques using the power of HLSL and DirectX 11

Doron Feinstein, Doron Feinstein

3D graphics are becoming increasingly more realistic and sophisticated as the power of modern hardware improves. The High Level Shader Language (HLSL) allows you to harness the power of shaders within DirectX 11, so that you can push the boundaries of 3D rendering like never before.HLSL Development Cookbook will provide you with a series of essential recipes to help you make the most out of different rendering techniques used within games and simulations using the DirectX 11 API.This book is specifically designed to help build your understanding via practical example. This essential Cookbook has coverage ranging from industry-standard lighting techniques to more specialist post-processing implementations such as bloom and tone mapping. Explained in a clear yet concise manner, each recipe is also accompanied by superb examples with full documentation so that you can harness the power of HLSL for your own individual requirements.

Data Visualization with D3 and AngularJS. Build dynamic and interactive visualizations from real-world data with D3 on AngularJS

Christoph Körner

ElasticSearch Server. Whether you're experienced in search servers or a newcomer, this book empowers you to get to grips with the speed and flexibility of ElasticSearch. A reader-friendly approach, including lots of hands-on examples, makes learning a pleasure

Rafal Kuc, Marek Rogozinski

ElasticSearch is an open source search server built on Apache Lucene. It was built to provide a scalable search solution with built-in support for near real-time search and multi-tenancy.Jumping into the world of ElasticSearch by setting up your own custom cluster, this book will show you how to create a fast, scalable, and flexible search solution. By learning the ins-and-outs of data indexing and analysis, ElasticSearch Server will start you on your journey to mastering the powerful capabilities of ElasticSearch. With practical chapters covering how to search data, extend your search, and go deep into cluster administration and search analysis, this book is perfect for those new and experienced with search servers.In ElasticSearch Server you will learn how to revolutionize your website or application with faster, more accurate, and flexible search functionality. Starting with chapters on setting up your own ElasticSearch cluster and searching and extending your search parameters you will quickly be able to create a fast, scalable, and completely custom search solution.Building on your knowledge further you will learn about ElasticSearch's query API and become confident using powerful filtering and faceting capabilities. You will develop practical knowledge on how to make use of ElasticSearch's near real-time capabilities and support for multi-tenancy.Your journey then concludes with chapters that help you monitor and tune your ElasticSearch cluster as well as advanced topics such as shard allocation, gateway configuration, and the discovery module.

Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Essentials. Master the basics of Unreal Engine 4 to build stunning video games

Satheesh PV, Satheesh P.V

Unreal Engine 4 is a complete suite of game development tools that gives you power to develop your game and seamlessly deploy it to iOS and Android devices. It can be used for the development of simple 2D games or even stunning high-end visuals. Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability and is a tool used by many game developers today.This book will introduce you to the most popular game development tool called Unreal Engine 4 with hands-on instructions for building stunning video games. You will begin by creating a new project or prototype by learning the essentials of Unreal Engine by getting familiar with the UI and Content Browser. Next, we'll import a sample asset from Autodesk 3ds max and learn more about Material Editor. After that we will learn more about Post Process. From there we will continue to learn more about Blueprints, Lights, UMG, C++ and more.

phpList 2 E-mail Campaign Manager. Get to grips with the phpList e-mail announcement delivery system!

David Young, phpList PAYPAL donate@phplist.com, David Young

Tired of an e-mail BCC list that scrolls off the page, or fiddly and hard-to-manage bulk mailing systems? You need phpList – a high-powered, robust, feature-packed mailing system that will get out of your way and get the job done! You want to know more about phpList?phpList is a popular open source e-mail campaign manager, sporting a powerful web frontend, rich message editor, and an advanced feature set.phpList 2 E-mail Campaign Manager will guide you from basic installation and setup through management, reporting, and automation of phpList, the world's most popular open source e-mail campaign manager. It also covers advanced customization and configuration of phpList.We start with a basic configuration, and finish with a full-featured e-mail management engine. You will work your way up from basic installation to advanced topics such as bounce automation, user and click-through tracking, and integration with third-party tools such as WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, and Blogger.Advanced topics such as securing your installation against spammers, attacks, and vulnerabilities are covered, as well as additional advanced and experimental features offered by phpList.This book is an invaluable guide for any e-mail publisher who wants a robust and powerful engine to manage their small-to-huge e-mail distribution empire.

Instant Galleria How-to. Recipes to make you an expert user of the Galleria JavaScript framework

Nathan Van Gheem

Providing beautiful and usable galleries is an important aspect of the Web today. A gallery solution needs to integrate into your web application easily and seamlessly. Users expect mobile sites that function on par with their desktop counterparts‚Äîespecially for image galleries. In order to accomplish these tasks, you need to use a JavaScript (not Flash) that is extensible and scales to mobile devices.Instant Galleria How-to will teach you how to use Galleria in advanced scenarios to become an expert and integrate Galleria into your next project using themes and plugins to accomplish any task.This book teaches you how to use and create themes and plugins,  using the Galleria API through a series of recipes that include a plethora of code examples. You'll be taken through detailed instructions on the usage of JavaScript to customize Galleria.You will create your own theme (mobile friendly), plugin, and learn all the configuration options of Galleria. You'll learn how to customize Galleria by using its extensive API, optimize Galleria, integrate with Google Analytics, create tests for your customization, and integrate into your web application.You'll become an expert user of the Galleria framework, which will enable you to deploy beautiful, mobile friendly galleries for your next web project.

Puppet 3 Cookbook. An essential book if you have responsibility for servers. Real-world examples and code will give you Puppet expertise, allowing more control over servers, cloud computing, and desktops. A time-saving, career-enhancing tutorial - Second Edition

John Arundel

A revolution is happening in web operations. Configuration management tools can build servers in seconds, and automate your entire network. Tools like Puppet are essential to taking full advantage of the power of cloud computing, and building reliable, scalable, secure, high-performance systems. More and more systems administration and IT jobs require some knowledge of configuration management, and specifically Puppet.Puppet 3 Cookbook takes you beyond the basics to explore the full power of Puppet, showing you in detail how to tackle a variety of real-world problems and applications. At every step it shows you exactly what commands you need to type, and includes full code samples for every recipe.The book takes the reader from a basic knowledge of Puppet to a complete and expert understanding of Puppet's latest and most advanced features, community best practices, writing great manifests, scaling and performance, and extending Puppet by adding your own providers and resources. It starts with guidance on how to set up and expand your Puppet infrastructure, then progresses through detailed information on the language and features, external tools, reporting, monitoring, and troubleshooting, and concludes with many specific recipes for managing popular applications.The book includes real examples from production systems and techniques that are in use in some of the world's largest Puppet installations, including a distributed Puppet architecture based on the Git version control system. You'll be introduced to powerful tools that work with Puppet such as Hiera. The book also explains managing Ruby applications and MySQL databases, building web servers, load balancers, high-availability systems with Heartbeat, and many other state-of-the-art techniques

Backbase 4 RIA Development. Create Enterprise-grade Rich Internet Applications using the Backbase client framework

Ghica van Emde, Sergey Ilinsky, Ghica van Emde Boas

Backbase is a very powerful and complex JavaScript library, with many user interface components to help make web development easier. It allows the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that run within all major browsers but its powers and complexity mean that the choice of component can be overwhelming. Understanding when and how to use the right component might not always be straightforward. This book makes that easier.This is a practical book that teaches you how to use the Backbase Client Framework effectively, with a complete overview and many examples. A core developer of the framework puts the technologies used into a wider perspective of existing web standards and a seasoned software architect explains why XML-based UI definition produces better web applications.The transparent use of AJAX technologies, for example to submit forms, or to retrieve updates for data grids, can be taken for granted with the Backbase framework. Packed with examples, the book shows you how to get the most from the library of UI components, and then extend the library with its own custom language. With this book in hand, it is easy to enable AJAX within your web application. You will be able to use the Backbase framework effectively, from basic applications to complex, custom-defined UI components.This book contains a complete overview of all the UI libraries available within the Backbase framework and shows examples for each element described.The Backbase framework offers an innovative Tag Definition Language (TDL), which allows developers to create new UI components that can be used as XML elements, in the same way as using the built-in GUI library. Using TDL brings considerable development advantages, and this book explains how.Significant attention is also given to architectural aspects of designing a web-application, showing sample applications using a model-view-controller approach.

Bonita Open Solution 5.x Essentials. Developing applications using Bonita Open Solution means you can model business processes in a workflow, and this book teaches you all the fundamentals by taking you through the entire development cycle

Rohit Bhat

Creating delightful web-based applications backed by complex business logic and intricate workflows is just one of the many things you can easily achieve by leveraging Bonita Open Solution. It is a highly customizable and efficient tool for business process modeling. Bonita Open Solution is a one-stop solution for developing scalable applications with a nifty user management system and easy deployment.This pragmatic, hands-on guide to developing complex applications is packed with succinct tips and demonstrations of the various aspects of Bonita Open Solution. This book will show you how to make the best use of the Bonita BPM tool, leverage its powerful backend engine, and design business application workflows with ease. By the end of this book, you will be able to develop a complete business process application.Right from designing web forms to integrating business logic to finally deploying the application on a server, this book takes you through the entire development cycle of an application created using Bonita Open Solution. You will learn about modeling business processes in Bonita, creating customizable web forms, and using connectors, contingencies, and transitions to move forward in the workflow. It also highlights the various page flows available, as well as the ease of use of the drag-and-drop, widget-based modular design of Bonita Studio. After developing the application, you will also learn about the various options for deployment, and the different environments on which it can be deployed.

Python Game Programming By Example. A pragmatic guide for developing your own games with Python

Alejandro Rodas de Paz, Joseph Howse

IntelliJ IDEA Essentials. Quickly get up and running with this practical IntelliJ IDEA tutorial guide, for developing better software faster

Jaroslaw Krochmalski

ASP.NET Core 9 Essentials. Master Razor Pages, Blazor, and MVC to build powerful, cloud-ready web applications

Albert S. Tanure

Build cutting-edge web applications using ASP.NET Core 9 with this comprehensive guide from Microsoft MVP Albert Tanure, a seasoned .NET expert with over 20 years of experience as a cloud solutions architect. Albert brings unparalleled expertise in building modern web applications to ASP.NET Core 9 Essentials to help you kickstart your journey on the right foot.Starting with the platform’s fundamental concepts, you’ll work through practical exercises to develop web applications with powerful UI frameworks, deliver flexible and scalable solutions through an API approach, and explore advanced topics such as customizing request flows and implementing robust security measures. You’ll get to grips with cloud-native practices to prepare your applications for cloud environments. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, this book is your guide to building modern, secure, and adaptable web applications with ASP.NET Core.By the end, you'll have the skills to create professional web applications that are scalable, resilient, and secure.

Oracle Information Integration, Migration, and Consolidation. The definitive guide to information integration and migration in a heterogeneous world

Prakash Nauduri, Tom Laszewski, Jason Williamson

The book covers data migration, data consolidation, and data integration, the three scenarios that are typically part of the information integration life cycle. Organizations typically find themselves migrating data to Oracle and either later, or at the same time, consolidating multiple database instances into a single global instance for a department, or even an entire company. The business savings and technical benefits of data consolidation cannot be overlooked, and this book will help you to use Oracle's technology to achieve these goals.This highly practical and business-applicable book will teach you to be successful with the latest Oracle data and application integration, migration, information life-cycle management, and consolidation products and technologies.In this book, you will gain hands-on advice about data consolidation, integration, and migration using tools and best practices. Along the way you will leverage products like Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, and SQL Developer, as well as Data Hubs and 11gR2 Database.The book covers everything from the early background of information integration and the impact of SOA, to products like Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator. By the end you'll have a clear idea of where information and application integration is headed and how to plan your own projects.

Mastering Windows Security and Hardening. Secure and protect your Windows environment from cyber threats using zero-trust security principles - Second Edition

Mark Dunkerley, Matt Tumbarello

Are you looking for the most current and effective ways to protect Windows-based systems from being compromised by intruders? This updated second edition is a detailed guide that helps you gain the expertise to implement efficient security measures and create robust defense solutions using modern technologies.The first part of the book covers security fundamentals with details around building and implementing baseline controls. As you advance, you’ll learn how to effectively secure and harden your Windows-based systems through hardware, virtualization, networking, and identity and access management (IAM). The second section will cover administering security controls for Windows clients and servers with remote policy management using Intune, Configuration Manager, Group Policy, Defender for Endpoint, and other Microsoft 365 and Azure cloud security technologies. In the last section, you’ll discover how to protect, detect, and respond with security monitoring, reporting, operations, testing, and auditing.By the end of this book, you’ll have developed an understanding of the processes and tools involved in enforcing security controls and implementing zero-trust security principles to protect Windows systems.

Vulkan 3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook. Implement expert-level techniques for high-performance graphics with Vulkan - Second Edition

Sergey Kosarevsky, Alexey Medvedev, Viktor Latypov, Anton Kaplanyan

Written by experts with decades of rendering experience, this cookbook equips you with practical, hands-on recipes to master modern 3D graphics development by using bindless Vulkan.Focusing on Vulkan 1.3, this second edition starts by setting up your development environment, and quickly transitions to building a robust 3D rendering framework using self-contained recipes. Each recipe helps you incrementally enhance your codebase, integrating a variety of 3D rendering techniques and algorithms into a cohesive project. You’ll get to grips with core techniques, such as glTF 2.0 physically based rendering, image-based lighting, and GPU-driven rendering. The chapters help you grasp advanced topics, including glTF animations, screen-space rendering techniques, and optimization strategies. You’ll also learn how to use glTF 2.0 advanced PBR extensions and handle complex geometry data, ensuring your rendering engine is both powerful and performant. These new additions will enable you to create dynamic and realistic 3D graphics environments, fully utilizing Vulkan’s capabilities.By the end of this 3D rendering book, you’ll have gained an improved understanding of best practices used in modern graphic APIs and be able to create fast and versatile 3D rendering frameworks.

Tableau Desktop Specialist Certification. A prep guide with multiple learning styles to help you gain Tableau Desktop Specialist certification

Adam Mico

The Tableau Desktop Specialist certification is fundamental for any data visualization professional who works in the field with Tableau.This book gets you started by covering the exam format, Tableau basics, and best practices for preparing data for analysis and visualization. It also builds on your knowledge of advanced Tableau topics to get you up to speed with the essential domains and domain objectives. Although the guide provides an outline and starting point to key in on what needs to be understood before the examination, it also delivers in context to give you a strong understanding of each piece before taking the exam. Instructions on how to get hands on with examples, a common data source, and suggested elements are also included. Understanding the concepts will not only assist you in passing the examination, but will also help you work effectively with the tool in your workspace.By the end of this book, you'll be able to efficiently prepare for the certification exam with the help of mock tests, detailed explanations, and expert advice from the author.

Achieving Digital Transformation Using Hybrid Cloud. Design standardized next-generation applications for any infrastructure

Vikas Grover, Ishu Verma, Praveen Rajagopalan

Hybrid cloud technology can be leveraged by organizations aiming to build next-gen applications while safeguarding prior technological investments. This book will help you explore different hybrid cloud architectural patterns, whether designing new projects or migrating legacy applications to the cloud.You'll learn about the key building blocks of hybrid cloud enabling you to deploy, manage, and secure applications and data while porting the workloads between environments without rebuilding. Further, you’ll explore Kubernetes, GitOps, and Layer 3/7 services to reduce operational complexity. You'll also learn about nuances of security and compliance in hybrid cloud followed by the economics of hybrid cloud. You’ll gain a deep understanding of the concepts with use cases from telecom 5G and industrial manufacturing, giving you a glimpse into real industry problems resolved by hybrid cloud, and unlocking millions of dollars of opportunities for enterprises.By the end of this book, you'll be well-equipped to design and develop efficient hybrid cloud strategies, lead conversations with senior IT and business executives, and succeed in hybrid cloud implementation or transformation opportunities.

Low-Code Application Development with Appian. The practitioner's guide to high-speed business automation at enterprise scale using Appian

Stefan Helzle

This book is an exhaustive overview of how the Appian Low-Code BPM Suite enables tech-savvy professionals to rapidly automate business processes across their organization, integrating people, software bots, and data. This is crucial as 80% of all software development is expected to be carried out in low code by 2024.This practical guide helps you master business application development with Appian as a beginner low-code developer. You'll learn to automate business processes using Appian low-code, records, processes, and expressions quickly and on an enterprise scale. In a fictional development project, guided by step-by-step explanations of the concepts and practical examples, this book will empower you to transform complex business processes into software.At first, you’ll learn the power of no-code with Appian Quick Apps to solve some of your most crucial business challenges. You’ll then get to grips with the building blocks of an Appian, starting with no-code and advancing to low-code, eventually transforming complex business requirements into a working enterprise-ready application.By the end of this book, you'll be able to deploy Appian Quick Apps in minutes and successfully transform a complex business process into low-code process models, data, and UIs to deploy full-featured, enterprise-ready, process-driven, mobile-enabled apps.

Instant IntroJs. Learn how to work with the IntroJs library to create useful, step-by-step help and introductions for websites and applications

Ehsan Arasteh, Afshin Mehrabani

IntroJs is a JavaScript and CSS3 library, used to create simple step-by-step help pages or introductions for websites and applications to show the users new features or whole application parts quickly and concisely. Instant IntroJs is a reference to get started with IntroJs right away.Instant IntroJs teaches you how to work with key IntroJs methods and events to create awesome step-by-step introductions. This book contains numerous examples of introductions and help pages with detailed explanations. It also shows you how to customize the library with your preferred stylesheet or integrate it with other server-side frameworks.Instant IntroJs teaches you how to work with the IntroJs API, methods, and events to create step-by-step introductions for websites and applications.This book will give you the knowledge to make the preferred changes to IntroJs in order to build a customized introduction. Instant IntroJs provides many examples of introductions and helps you with using HTML attributes and JSON configurations, as well as some descriptions about how to use and integrate IntroJs with other server-side libraries, such as Ruby on Rails and PHP Yii. You will be provided with information about the latest features of IntroJs that include multi-page introductions, creating introductions using JSON configuration and HTML attributes, methods to change or customize the library, and more.Instant IntroJs provides full and detailed examples of step-by-step introductions to help you easily learn and use the latest version of the IntroJs library.

Hands-On Domain-Driven Design with .NET Core. Tackling complexity in the heart of software by putting DDD principles into practice

Alexey Zimarev

Developers across the world are rapidly adopting DDD principles to deliver powerful results when writing software that deals with complex business requirements. This book will guide you in involving business stakeholders when choosing the software you are planning to build for them. By figuring out the temporal nature of behavior-driven domain models, you will be able to build leaner, more agile, and modular systems.You’ll begin by uncovering domain complexity and learn how to capture the behavioral aspects of the domain language. You will then learn about EventStorming and advance to creating a new project in .NET Core 2.1; you’ll also and write some code to transfer your events from sticky notes to C#. The book will show you how to use aggregates to handle commands and produce events. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with Bounded Contexts, Context Map, Event Sourcing, and CQRS. After translating domain models into executable C# code, you will create a frontend for your application using Vue.js. In addition to this, you’ll learn how to refactor your code and cover event versioning and migration essentials.By the end of this DDD book, you will have gained the confidence to implement the DDD approach in your organization and be able to explore new techniques that complement what you’ve learned from the book.

Hands-On Motion Graphics with Adobe After Effects CC. Develop your skills as a visual effects and motion graphics artist

David Dodds

If you’re thinking seriously about making and publishing your videos with professional editing and animation, look no further! Adobe After Effects is a popular tool among video editors and YouTubers to enhance their videos and bring them to life by implementing visual effects and motion graphics.This book will take you right from the basics through to the advanced techniques in Adobe After Effects CC 2018. You will start by setting up your editing environment to learn and improve techniques to sharpen your video editing skills. Furthermore, you will work with basic and advanced special effects to create, modify, and optimize motion graphics in your videos. Lastly, you will not only learn how to create 2.5D animations, but also get to grips with using Cinema 4D Lite to build and animate complete 3D scenes.By the end of the book, you’ll have learned how to package a video efficiently with the help of the projects covered.