Integrate an end-to-end logistic chain using IBM Blockchain and IoT platforms Key Features *Explore practical implementation of ledger technology in the IoT architecture *Study security best practices for your smart devices *Understand Blockchain implementation for end-to-end IoT solutions Book Description Blockchain has been the hot topic of late thanks to cryptocurrencies. To make matters more interesting, the financial market is looking for ways to reduce operational costs and generate new business models, and this is where blockchain solutions come into the picture. In addition to this, with Internet of Things (IoT) trending and Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other devices flooding the market, you can now create cheap devices even at home. Hands-On IoT Solutions with Blockchain starts with an overview of IoT concepts in the current business scenario. It then helps you develop your own device on the IBM Watson IoT platform and create your fi rst IoT solution using Watson and Intel Edison.Once you are familiar with IoT, you will learn about Blockchain technology and its use cases. You will also work with the Hyperledger framework and develop your own Blockchain network. As you progress through the chapters, you'll work with problem statements and learn how to design your solution architecture so that you can create your own integrated Blockchain and IoT solution. The next set of chapters will explain how to implement end-to-end Blockchain solutions with IoT using the IBM Cloud platform. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the convergence of IoT and Blockchain technology and exploited the best practices and drivers to develop a bulletproof integrated solution. What you will learn *Understand the key roles of IoT in the current market *Study the different aspects of IBM Watson IoT platform *Create devices, gateways, and applications connected to the platform *Explore the fundamentals of Blockchain *Define good use cases for Blockchain *Discover the Hyperledger Fabric and Composer frameworks *Develop an IBM Watson IoT application using a Intel Edison *Integrate IoT with the Blockchain platform Who this book is for Hands-On IoT Solutions with Blockchain is for you if you are an Internet of Things (IoT) analyst, architect, engineer, or any stakeholder responsible for security mechanisms on an IoT infrastructure. This book is also for IT professionals who want to start developing solutions using Blockchain and IoT on the IBM Cloud platform. Basic understanding of IoT will assist you in understanding key concepts covered in the book.

A hands-on guide enriched with examples to master deep reinforcement learning algorithms with Python About This Book ? Your entry point into the world of artificial intelligence using the power of Python ? An example-rich guide to master various RL and DRL algorithms ? Explore various state-of-the-art architectures along with math Who This Book Is For If you’re a machine learning developer or deep learning enthusiast interested in artificial intelligence and want to learn about reinforcement learning from scratch, this book is for you. Some knowledge of linear algebra, calculus, and the Python programming language will help you understand the concepts covered in this book. What You Will Learn ? Understand the basics of reinforcement learning methods, algorithms, and elements ? Train an agent to walk using OpenAI Gym and Tensorflow ? Understand the Markov Decision Process, Bellman’s optimality, and TD learning ? Solve multi-armed-bandit problems using various algorithms ? Master deep learning algorithms, such as RNN, LSTM, and CNN with applications ? Build intelligent agents using the DRQN algorithm to play the Doom game ? Teach agents to play the Lunar Lander game using DDPG ? Train an agent to win a car racing game using dueling DQN In Detail Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the trending and most promising branch of artificial intelligence. Hands-On Reinforcement learning with Python will help you master not only the basic reinforcement learning algorithms but also the advanced deep reinforcement learning algorithms. The book starts with an introduction to Reinforcement Learning followed by OpenAI Gym, and TensorFlow. You will then explore various RL algorithms and concepts, such as Markov Decision Process, Monte Carlo methods, and dynamic programming, including value and policy iteration. This example-rich guide will introduce you to deep reinforcement learning algorithms, such as Dueling DQN, DRQN, A3C, PPO, and TRPO. You will also learn about imagination-augmented agents, learning from human preference, DQfD, HER, and many more of the recent advancements in reinforcement learning. By the end of the book, you will have all the knowledge and experience needed to implement reinforcement learning and deep reinforcement learning in your projects, and you will be all set to enter the world of artificial intelligence. Style and approach This is a hands-on book designed to further expand your machine learning skills by understanding reinforcement to deep reinforcement learning algorithms with applications in Python.

Enhance the power of NumPy and start boosting your scientific computing capabilities About This Book ? Grasp all aspects of numerical computing and understand NumPy ? Explore examples to learn exploratory data analysis (EDA), regression, and clustering ? Access NumPy libraries and use performance benchmarking to select the right tool Who This Book Is For Mastering Numerical Computing with NumPy is for you if you are a Python programmer, data analyst, data engineer, or a data science enthusiast, who wants to master the intricacies of NumPy and build solutions for your numeric and scientific computational problems. You are expected to have familiarity with mathematics to get the most out of this book. What You Will Learn ? Perform vector and matrix operations using NumPy ? Perform exploratory data analysis (EDA) on US housing data ? Develop a predictive model using simple and multiple linear regression ? Understand unsupervised learning and clustering algorithms with practical use cases ? Write better NumPy code and implement the algorithms from scratch ? Perform benchmark tests to choose the best configuration for your system In Detail NumPy is one of the most important scientific computing libraries available for Python. Mastering Numerical Computing with NumPy teaches you how to achieve expert level competency to perform complex operations, with in-depth coverage of advanced concepts. Beginning with NumPy's arrays and functions, you will familiarize yourself with linear algebra concepts to perform vector and matrix math operations. You will thoroughly understand and practice data processing, exploratory data analysis (EDA), and predictive modeling. You will then move on to working on practical examples which will teach you how to use NumPy statistics in order to explore US housing data and develop a predictive model using simple and multiple linear regression techniques. Once you have got to grips with the basics, you will explore unsupervised learning and clustering algorithms, followed by understanding how to write better NumPy code while keeping advanced considerations in mind. The book also demonstrates the use of different high-performance numerical computing libraries and their relationship with NumPy. You will study how to benchmark the performance of different configurations and choose the best for your system. By the end of this book, you will have become an expert in handling and performing complex data manipulations. Style and approach This mastering guide will help you master your skills required to perform a complex numerical computation. The book contains the right mixture of theory and practical examples that will help you in dealing with the advanced NumPy and build solutions for your numeric and scientific computational problems

Explore Jira Software to manage your projects proficiently About This Book ? Plan and manage projects effortlessly with Jira Software by integrating it with other applications ? Improve your team's performance with Scrum and Kanban, together with agile methodology ? Easy-to-follow learning guide to install Jira Software and understand how it fits in with Atlassian Jira Who This Book Is For If you want to get started with Jira Software and learn how to run your Jira projects the agile way, then this is the perfect book for you. You will need to be familiar with the basics of Jira, both from an end user's and an administrator's perspective. Experience with workflows, custom fields, and other administrative functions of Jira will be useful. What You Will Learn ? Understand the basics and agile methodologies of Jira software ? Use Jira Software in a Scrum environment ? Manage and run Jira Software projects beyond the out of box Scrum and Kanban way ? Combine Scrum and Kanban and use other project management options beyond just agile ? Customize Jira Software’s various features and options as per your requirements ? Work with Jira Agile offline, and plan and forecast projects with agile portfolio ? Integrate Jira Agile with Confluence and Bitbucket In Detail Jira Software is an agile project management tool that supports any agile methodology, be it scrum, Kanban, or your own unique flavour. From agile boards to reports, you can plan, track, and manage all your agile software development projects from a single tool. Jira Software brings the power of agile methodology to Atlassian Jira. This second edition of JIRA Agile Essentials, will help you dive straight into the action, exploring critical agile terminologies and concepts in the context of Jira Software. You will learn how to plan, track, and release great software. This book will teach you how to install and run Jira Software and set it up to run with Scrum and Kanban. It will also teach you to use Jira Software your way and run projects beyond the out-of-box Scrum and Kanban way, including a hybrid approach of both the methodologies and other options that come with Jira Software. Later, you will learn how to integrate it with the tools you are already using and enhance Jira with add-ons such as Confluence. You will learn to stay connected with your team from anywhere to ensure great development. Jira Software has numerous deployment options in the cloud, on your own infrastructure, or at a massive scale. You will be introduced to Bitbucket, Atlassian’s distributed version control system, which integrates seamlessly with Jira, allowing your team to work within the two applications as one harmonious environment. With this practical guide, you will develop a great working knowledge of Jira Software and your project management will become much more efficient. Style and approach This practical book explains Jira Software with the help of detailed examples in a step-by- step manner.

Learn to use IPython and Jupyter Notebook for your data analysis and visualization work. About This Book ? Leverage the Jupyter Notebook for interactive data science and visualization ? Become an expert in high-performance computing and visualization for data analysis and scientific modeling ? A comprehensive coverage of scientific computing through many hands-on, example-driven recipes with detailed, step-by-step explanations Who This Book Is For This book is intended for anyone interested in numerical computing and data science: students, researchers, teachers, engineers, analysts, and hobbyists. A basic knowledge of Python/NumPy is recommended. Some skills in mathematics will help you understand the theory behind the computational methods. What You Will Learn ? Master all features of the Jupyter Notebook ? Code better: write high-quality, readable, and well-tested programs; profile and optimize your code; and conduct reproducible interactive computing experiments ? Visualize data and create interactive plots in the Jupyter Notebook ? Write blazingly fast Python programs with NumPy, ctypes, Numba, Cython, OpenMP, GPU programming (CUDA), parallel IPython, Dask, and more ? Analyze data with Bayesian or frequentist statistics (Pandas, PyMC, and R), and learn from actual data through machine learning (scikit-learn) ? Gain valuable insights into signals, images, and sounds with SciPy, scikit-image, and OpenCV ? Simulate deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems in Python ? Familiarize yourself with math in Python using SymPy and Sage: algebra, analysis, logic, graphs, geometry, and probability theory In Detail Python is one of the leading open source platforms for data science and numerical computing. IPython and the associated Jupyter Notebook offer efficient interfaces to Python for data analysis and interactive visualization, and they constitute an ideal gateway to the platform. IPython Interactive Computing and Visualization Cookbook, Second Edition contains many ready-to-use, focused recipes for high-performance scientific computing and data analysis, from the latest IPython/Jupyter features to the most advanced tricks, to help you write better and faster code. You will apply these state-of-the-art methods to various real-world examples, illustrating topics in applied mathematics, scientific modeling, and machine learning. The first part of the book covers programming techniques: code quality and reproducibility, code optimization, high-performance computing through just-in-time compilation, parallel computing, and graphics card programming. The second part tackles data science, statistics, machine learning, signal and image processing, dynamical systems, and pure and applied mathematics. Style and approach IPython Interactive Computing and Visualization Cookbook, Second Edition is a practical, hands-on book that will teach you how to analyze and visualize all kinds of data in the Jupyter Notebook.

Orchestrate your cloud infrastructure About This Book ? Recipe-based approach to install and configure cloud resources using Ansible ? Covers various cloud-related modules and their functionalities ? Includes deployment of a sample application to the cloud resources that we create ? Learn the best possible way to manage and automate your cloud infrastructure Who This Book Is For If you are a system administrator, infrastructure engineer, or a DevOps engineer who wants to obtain practical knowledge about Ansible and its cloud deliverables, then this book is for you. Recipes in this book are designed for people who would like to manage their cloud infrastructures efficiently using Ansible, which is regarded as one of the best tools for cloud management and automation. What You Will Learn ? Use Ansible Vault to protect secrets ? Understand how Ansible modules interact with cloud providers to manage resources ? Build cloud-based resources for your application ? Create resources beyond simple virtual machines ? Write tasks that can be reused to create resources multiple times ? Work with self-hosted clouds such as OpenStack and Docker ? Deploy a multi-tier application on various cloud providers In Detail Ansible has a large collection of inbuilt modules to manage various cloud resources. The book begins with the concepts needed to safeguard your credentials and explain how you interact with cloud providers to manage resources. Each chapter begins with an introduction and prerequisites to use the right modules to manage a given cloud provider. Learn about Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and other providers. Each chapter shows you how to create basic computing resources, which you can then use to deploy an application. Finally, you will be able to deploy a sample application to demonstrate various usage patterns and utilities of resources. Style and approach This book will help readers get started with Ansible cloud modules. It has code snippets and diagrams along with real world examples that will help you move ahead easily. Using real world scenarios, you will learn to deploy an application to cloud resources.

Test your C++ programming skills by solving real-world programming problems covered in the book About This Book ? Solve a variety of real-world programming and logic problems by leveraging the power of C++17 ? Test your skills in using language features, algorithms, data structures, design patterns, and more ? Explore areas such as cryptography, communication, and image handling in C++ Who This Book Is For This book will appeal to C++ developers of all levels. There's a challenge inside for everyone. What You Will Learn ? Serialize and deserialize JSON and XML data ? Perform encryption and signing to facilitate secure communication between parties ? Embed and use SQLite databases in your applications ? Use threads and asynchronous functions to implement generic purpose parallel algorithms ? Compress and decompress files to/from a ZIP archive ? Implement data structures such as circular buffer and priority queue ? Implement general purpose algorithms as well as algorithms that solve specific problems ? Create client-server applications that communicate over TCP/IP ? Consume HTTP REST services ? Use design patterns to solve real-world problems In Detail C++ is one of the most widely-used programming languages and has applications in a variety of fields, such as gaming, GUI programming, and operating systems, to name a few. Through the years, C++ has evolved into (and remains) one of the top choices for software developers worldwide. This book will show you some notable C++ features and how to implement them to meet your application needs. Each problem is unique and doesn't just test your knowledge of the language; it tests your ability to think out of the box and come up with the best solutions. With varying levels of difficulty, you'll be faced with a wide variety of challenges. And in case you're stumped, you don't have to worry: we've got the best solutions to the problems in the book. So are you up for the challenge? Style and approach A recipe-based approach where each problem is solved with the help of step by step instructions.

If you are a professional, student, or educator who wants to learn to use IPython Notebook as a tool for technical and scientific computing, visualization, and data analysis, this is the book for you. This book will prove valuable for anyone that needs to do computations in an agile environment.

This book is packed with real world examples that cover concepts and usability of the core modules of a complex application. If you are Project manager or consultant looking forward to using and implementing Oracle Primavera Contract Management in your organization, then this is the best guide for you. No prior knowledge of PCM required.

This is a hands-on book to quickly get you up to speed with SQL Server 2012. It covers all the new features of the core database engine as well as the business intelligence (BI) services.The book begins by taking you step-by-step through the installation process, showing you what to install and which services and features you need. Once you have your SQL Server in place, you learn how to administer it and then explore new T-SQL functions to expand your query-writing toolkit. You will discover how the enhancements to Integration Services, Analysis Services and Reporting Services make developing BI solutions easier. It will then introduce you to SQL Server Data Tools, your new and improved development environment for creating database and BI projects.A hands-on example guides you through the steps required to run Distributed Replay, giving you the experience you need to apply this in the field. The book then takes you through a detailed example to show you how to create a Data Quality Services project and cleanse real-world data. Easy to follow code samples provide you with the queries you need to set up Availability Groups using the new AlwaysOn technology.Once you are comfortable with these new features you will be ready to migrate your data to the cloud and into SQL Azure. An exploration of Hadoop will help you understand big data and how it really is the next big thing,This concise reference is for database administrators, SQL Server Developers and BI professionals. Anyone who is familiar with SQL Server 2008 R2 and needs to make the jump to the latest version with the shortest learning curve will find this book useful.

This practical tutorial-based book is filled with information about the architecture, functionality, and extensions of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Dynamic Access Control.If you are an IT consultant/architect, system engineer, system administrator, or security engineers planning to implement Dynamic Access Control in your organization, or have already implemented it and want to discover more about the abilities and how to use them effectively, this book will be an essential resource. You should have some understanding of security solutions, Active Directory, Access Privileges/ Rights and Authentication methods, and a fundamental understanding of Microsoft technologies. Programming knowledge is not required but can be helpful for using PowerShell or the APIs to customize your solution.

This book is full of step-by-step example-oriented tutorials which will show readers how to integrate Solr in PHP applications using the available libraries, and boost the inherent search facilities that Solr offers.If you are a developer who knows PHP and is interested in integrating search into your applications, this is the book for you. No advanced knowledge of Solr is required. Very basic knowledge of system commands and the command-line interface on both Linux and Windows is required. You should also be familiar with the concept of Web servers.

This practical and easy-to-understand learning tutorial is one big exciting exercise for students and engineers that are always short on their schedules and want to regain some lost time with the help of Simulink.This book is aimed at students and engineers who need a quick start with Simulink. Though it's not required in order to understand how Simulink works, knowledge of physics will help the reader to understand the exercises described.

KNIME Essentials is a practical guide aimed at getting the results you want, as quickly as possible."Knime Essentials" is written for data analysts looking to quickly get up to speed using the market leader in data processing tools, KNIME. No knowledge of KNIME is required, but we will assume that you have some background in data processing.

This book is for web developers willing to build better web applications. A basic knowledge of PHP, XML, JavaScript and MySQL, or a strong will to learn-as-you-type, is assumed.

The book is uniquely practical. A richly textured case study is used throughout the book. Although some aspects of the Airport Passenger Services business process are simplified for sake of clarity and efficiency, it provides a comprehensive practical grounding for theoretical UML knowledge. The case study itself was developed in partnership with employees of Zurich Airport. The book was written for business analysts, technical architects and developers. It does not require detailed programming knowledge, nor is prior experience of UML mandatory. It shows how, with UML, simple models of business processes and specification models can be created and read with little effort.

An in-depth tutorial that teaches you the basics of data-driven applications, and how to design and implement them using Ext JS.If you are an intermediate in Sencha Ext JS, "Ext JS Data-Driven Application Design" is the tutorial for you. You need to be familiar with JavaScript and have basic operational knowledge of MySQL. If you want to be able to systematically construct an application from the first step to implementation, this book will be useful for you.

This is a step-by-step tutorial that covers the basics of working with the MicroStrategy platform.If you are a BI developer who would like to use MicroStrategy to build BI apps, this book is ideal for you. This book is also for mid-management executives who need to analyze data and Excel files that are too complicated to manage. A basic concept of BI is assumed.

A practical guide, packed with illustrations, that will help you become proficient with Hudson and able to utilize it how you want.If you are a Java developer or administrator who would to like automate some of the mundane work required to build and test software and improve software quality, this is the book for you. If you are a development manager or tester, you can also benefit from learning how Hudson works by gaining some insight into test results and historical trends.

A step-by-step tutorial-based guide aimed at giving you hands-on practical experience to develop AR applications for Android.Augmented Reality for Android Application Development is for Android mobile application developers who are familiar with Android Development Tools and deployment, JMonkeyEngine, and the Vuforia SDK.

into the world of Kivy.This book is aimed at Python developers who are familiar with Python and have a good understanding of concepts like inheritance, classes, and instances. No previous experience of Kivy is required, though some knowledge of event handling, scheduling, and user interfaces, in general, would boost your learning.