Enhance your Kotlin programming skills by building 3 real-world applications About This Book ? Build three full-fledged, engaging applications from scratch and learn to deploy them ? Enhance your app development and programming activities with Kotlin’s powerful and intuitive tools and utilities. ? Experience the gentle learning curve, expressiveness, and intuitiveness of Kotlin, as you develop your own applications Who This Book Is For This book is for those who are new to Kotlin or are familiar with the basics, having dabbled with Java until now. Basic programming knowledge is mandatory. What You Will Learn ? Learn the building blocks of the Kotlin programming language ? Develop powerful RESTful microservices for Android applications ? Create reactive Android applications efficiently ? Implement an MVC architecture pattern and dependency management using Kotlin ? Centralize, transform, and stash data with Logstash ? Secure applications using Spring Security ? Deploy Kotlin microservices to AWS and Android applications to the Play Store In Detail Kotlin greatly reduces the verbosity of source code. With Google having announced their support for Kotlin as a first-class language for writing Android apps, now's the time learn how to create apps from scratch with Kotlin Kotlin Programming By Example takes you through the building blocks of Kotlin, such as functions and classes. You’ll explore various features of Kotlin by building three applications of varying complexity. For a quick start to Android development, we look at building a classic game, Tetris, and elaborate on object-oriented programming in Kotlin. Our next application will be a messenger app, a level up in terms of complexity. Before moving onto the third app, we take a look at data persistent methods, helping us learn about the storage and retrieval of useful applications. Our final app is a place reviewer: a web application that will make use of the Google Maps API and Place Picker. By the end of this book, you will have gained experience of of creating and deploying Android applications using Kotlin. Style and approach Here we will build three exciting projects in Kotlin which will demonstrate how to effectively use Kotlin language constructs

Building efficient Python applications at minimal cost by adopting serverless architectures About This Book ? Design and set up a data flow between cloud services and custom business logic ? Make your applications efficient and reliable using serverless architecture ? Build and deploy scalable serverless Python APIs Who This Book Is For This book is for Python developers who would like to learn about serverless architecture. Python programming knowledge is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Understand how AWS Lambda and Microsoft Azure Functions work and use them to create an application ? Explore various triggers and how to select them, based on the problem statement ? Build deployment packages for Lambda functions ? Master the finer details about building Lambda functions and versioning ? Log and monitor serverless applications ? Learn about security in AWS and Lambda functions ? Scale up serverless applications to handle huge workloads and serverless distributed systems in production ? Understand SAM model deployment in AWS Lambda In Detail Serverless architectures allow you to build and run applications and services without having to manage the infrastructure. Many companies have adopted this architecture to save cost and improve scalability. This book will help you design serverless architectures for your applications with AWS and Python. The book is divided into three modules. The first module explains the fundamentals of serverless architecture and how AWS lambda functions work. In the next module, you will learn to build, release, and deploy your application to production. You will also learn to log and test your application. In the third module, we will take you through advanced topics such as building a serverless API for your application. You will also learn to troubleshoot and monitor your app and master AWS lambda programming concepts with API references. Moving on, you will also learn how to scale up serverless applications and handle distributed serverless systems in production. By the end of the book, you will be equipped with the knowledge required to build scalable and cost-efficient Python applications with a serverless framework. Style and approach The book takes a pragmatic approach, using a real-world example to demonstrate building efficient, secure, and scalable serverless applications.

Leverage the power of Python and its de facto GUI framework to build highly interactive interfaces About This Book ? The fundamentals of Python and GUI programming with Tkinter. ? Create multiple cross-platform projects by integrating a host of third-party libraries and tools. ? Build beautiful and highly-interactive user interfaces that target multiple devices. Who This Book Is For This book is for beginners to GUI programming who haven’t used Tkinter yet and are eager to start building great-looking and user-friendly GUIs. Prior knowledge of Python programming is expected. What You Will Learn ? Create a scrollable frame via theCanvas widget ? Use the pack geometry manager andFrame widget to control layout ? Learn to choose a data structurefor a game ? Group Tkinter widgets, such asbuttons, canvases, and labels ? Create a highly customizablePython editor ? Design and lay out a chat window In Detail Tkinter is a modular, cross-platform application development toolkit for Python. When developing GUI-rich applications, the most important choices are which programming language(s) and which GUI framework to use. Python and Tkinter prove to be a great combination. This book will get you familiar with Tkinter by having you create fun and interactive projects. These projects have varying degrees of complexity. We'll start with a simple project, where you'll learn the fundamentals of GUI programming and the basics of working with a Tkinter application. After getting the basics right, we'll move on to creating a project of slightly increased complexity, such as a highly customizable Python editor. In the next project, we'll crank up the complexity level to create an instant messaging app. Toward the end, we'll discuss various ways of packaging our applications so that they can be shared and installed on other machines without the user having to learn how to install and run Python programs. Style and approach Step by Step guide with real world examples

Create reports and solve common report problems with minimal fuss. About This Book ? Use this unique book to master the basics and advanced features of Pentaho 8 Reporting. ? A book showing developers and analysts with IT skills how to create and use the best possible reports using the Pentaho platform. ? Written with a very practical approach: full of tutorials and practical examples (source code included). Who This Book Is For This book is written for two types of professionals and students: Information Technologists with a basic knowledge of Databases and Java Developers with medium seniority. Developers will be interested to discover how to embed reports in a third-party Java application. What You Will Learn ? The basics of Pentaho Reporting (Designer and SDK) and its initial setup. ? Develop the most attractive reports on top of a wide range of data sources. ? Perform detailed customization of layout, parameterization, internationalization, behaviors, and more for your custom reports developed with Pentaho Reporting. ? Integrate Pentaho reports into third-party Java application with full control over interactions, layout, and behavior in general. ? Use Pentaho reports in the other components of the Pentaho Suite (BA Platform and PDI). In Detail This hands-on tutorial, filled with exercises and examples, introduces the reader to a variety of concepts within Pentaho Reporting. With screenshots that show you how reports look at design time as well as how they should look when rendered as PDF, Excel, HTML, Text, Rich-Text-File, XML, and CSV, this book also contains complete example source code that you can copy and paste into your environment to get up-and-running quickly. Updated to cover the features of Pentaho 8, this book will teach you everything you need to know to build fast, efficient reports using Pentaho. If your interest lies in the technical details of creating reports and you want to see how to solve common reporting problems with a minimum of fuss, this is the book for you. Style and approach A step-by-step guide covering technical topics relating to environments, best practices, and source code, to enable the reader to assemble the best reports and use them in existing Java applications.

Plan, design, and deploy System Center Configuration Manager 1706 like never before, regardless of how complex your infrastructure is About This Book ? The most up-to-date resource on deploying or migrating to System Center Configuration Manager 1706 within your IT infrastructure ? Plan, design, and deploy ConfigMgr 1706 with ease, both on primary and multiple-hierarchy sites ? Master the new features of ConfigMgr 1706, including Windows 10 support Who This Book Is For If you are a system engineer or an administrator planning to deploy Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 1706, then this book is for you. This book will also benefit system administrators who are responsible for designing and deploying one or more System CenterConfiguration Manager 1706 sites in their new or existing systems. What You Will Learn ? Install ConfigMgr servers and the necessary roles ? Design and scale ConfigMgr environments ? Configure and administrate essential ConfigMgr roles and features ? Create software packages using .msi and .exe files ? Deliver detailed reports with an automatic patching process ? Apply proper hardening on your deployment and secure workstations ? Deploy operating systems and updates leveraging ConfigMgr mechanisms ? Create high-availability components using the built-in mechanism for backup and recovery In Detail It becomes important to plan, design, and deploy configurations when administrators know that Configuration Manager interacts with a number of infrastructure components such as Active Directory Domain Services, network protocols, Windows Server services, and so on. Via real-world-world deployment scenarios, this book will help you implement a single primary site or multiples sites. You will be able to efficiently plan and deploy a multiple-site hierarchy such as central administration site. Next, you will learn various methods to plan and deploy Configuration Manager clients, secure them and make the most of new features offered through ConfigMgr 1706 like compliance, deploying updates operating systems to the endpoints. Then, this book will show you how to install, configure, and run SQL reports to extract information. Lastly, you will also learn how to create and manage users access in an ConfigMgr environment By the end of this book, you will have learned to use the built-in mechanism to back up and restore data and also design maintenance plan. Style and approach This step-by-step guide teaches you cool ways to plan, deploy, and configure ConfigMgr 1706. This tutorial, which complements the release of ConfigMgr 1706 with a refreshing new approach and expert guidance, will teach you everything you need to know about the essentials of server.

Over 80 recipes to help you breeze through your data analysis projects using R About This Book ? Analyse your data using the popular R packages like ggplot2 with ready-to-use and customizable recipes ? Find meaningful insights from your data and generate dynamic reports ? A practical guide to help you put your data analysis skills in R to practical use Who This Book Is For This book is for data scientists, analysts and even enthusiasts who want to learn and implement the various data analysis techniques using R in a practical way. Those looking for quick, handy solutions to common tasks and challenges in data analysis will find this book to be very useful. Basic knowledge of statistics and R programming is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Acquire, format and visualize your data using R ? Using R to perform an Exploratory data analysis ? Introduction to machine learning algorithms such as classification and regression ? Get started with social network analysis ? Generate dynamic reporting with Shiny ? Get started with geospatial analysis ? Handling large data with R using Spark and MongoDB ? Build Recommendation system- Collaborative Filtering, Content based and Hybrid ? Learn real world dataset examples- Fraud Detection and Image Recognition In Detail Data analytics with R has emerged as a very important focus for organizations of all kinds. R enables even those with only an intuitive grasp of the underlying concepts, without a deep mathematical background, to unleash powerful and detailed examinations of their data. This book will show you how you can put your data analysis skills in R to practical use, with recipes catering to the basic as well as advanced data analysis tasks. Right from acquiring your data and preparing it for analysis to the more complex data analysis techniques, the book will show you how you can implement each technique in the best possible manner. You will also visualize your data using the popular R packages like ggplot2 and gain hidden insights from it. Starting with implementing the basic data analysis concepts like handling your data to creating basic plots, you will master the more advanced data analysis techniques like performing cluster analysis, and generating effective analysis reports and visualizations. Throughout the book, you will get to know the common problems and obstacles you might encounter while implementing each of the data analysis techniques in R, with ways to overcoming them in the easiest possible way. By the end of this book, you will have all the knowledge you need to become an expert in data analysis with R, and put your skills to test in real-world scenarios. Style and Approach ? Hands-on recipes to walk through data science challenges using R ? Your one-stop solution for common and not-so-common pain points while performing real-world problems to execute a series of tasks. ? Addressing your common and not-so-common pain points, this is a book that you must have on the shelf

Simplify machine learning model implementations with Spark About This Book ? Solve the day-to-day problems of data science with Spark ? This unique cookbook consists of exciting and intuitive numerical recipes ? Optimize your work by acquiring, cleaning, analyzing, predicting, and visualizing your data Who This Book Is For This book is for Scala developers with a fairly good exposure to and understanding of machine learning techniques, but lack practical implementations with Spark. A solid knowledge of machine learning algorithms is assumed, as well as hands-on experience of implementing ML algorithms with Scala. However, you do not need to be acquainted with the Spark ML libraries and ecosystem. What You Will Learn ? Get to know how Scala and Spark go hand-in-hand for developers when developing ML systems with Spark ? Build a recommendation engine that scales with Spark ? Find out how to build unsupervised clustering systems to classify data in Spark ? Build machine learning systems with the Decision Tree and Ensemble models in Spark ? Deal with the curse of high-dimensionality in big data using Spark ? Implement Text analytics for Search Engines in Spark ? Streaming Machine Learning System implementation using Spark In Detail Machine learning aims to extract knowledge from data, relying on fundamental concepts in computer science, statistics, probability, and optimization. Learning about algorithms enables a wide range of applications, from everyday tasks such as product recommendations and spam filtering to cutting edge applications such as self-driving cars and personalized medicine. You will gain hands-on experience of applying these principles using Apache Spark, a resilient cluster computing system well suited for large-scale machine learning tasks. This book begins with a quick overview of setting up the necessary IDEs to facilitate the execution of code examples that will be covered in various chapters. It also highlights some key issues developers face while working with machine learning algorithms on the Spark platform. We progress by uncovering the various Spark APIs and the implementation of ML algorithms with developing classification systems, recommendation engines, text analytics, clustering, and learning systems. Toward the final chapters, we’ll focus on building high-end applications and explain various unsupervised methodologies and challenges to tackle when implementing with big data ML systems. Style and approach This book is packed with intuitive recipes supported with line-by-line explanations to help you understand how to optimize your work flow and resolve problems when working with complex data modeling tasks and predictive algorithms. This is a valuable resource for data scientists and those working on large scale data projects.

Learn how to leverage the features of the new Entity Framework Core APIs and use them to build pure .NET Core applications. About This Book ? Learn how to effectively manage your database to make it more productive and maintainable. ? Write simplified queries using LINQ to acquire the desired data easily ? Raise the abstraction level from data to objects so teams can function independently, resulting in easily maintainable code Who This Book Is For This book is for .NET Core developers who would like to integrate EF Core in their application. Prior knowledge of .NET Core and C# is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Create databases and perform CRUD operations on them ? Understand and build relationships (related to entities, keys, and properties) ? Understand in-built, custom, and remote validation (both client and server side) ? You will learn to handle concurrency to build responsive applications ? You will handle transactions and multi-tenancy while also improving performance In Detail Being able to create and maintain data-oriented applications has become crucial in modern programming. This is why Microsoft came up with Entity Framework so architects can optimize storage requirements while also writing efficient and maintainable application code. This book is a comprehensive guide that will show how to utilize the power of the Entity Framework to build efficient .NET Core applications. It not only teaches all the fundamentals of Entity Framework Core but also demonstrates how to use it practically so you can implement it in your software development. The book is divided into three modules. The first module focuses on building entities and relationships. Here you will also learn about different mapping techniques, which will help you choose the one best suited to your application design. Once you have understood the fundamentals of the Entity Framework, you will move on to learn about validation and querying in the second module. It will also teach you how to execute raw SQL queries and extend the Entity Framework to leverage Query Objects using the Query Object Pattern. The final module of the book focuses on performance optimization and managing the security of your application. You will learn to implement failsafe mechanisms using concurrency tokens. The book also explores row-level security and multitenant databases in detail. By the end of the book, you will be proficient in implementing Entity Framework on your .NET Core applications. Style and approach This book is filled with various examples that will help you use Entity Framework Core 2.0 to write efficient software.

Discover Android programming and web development by understanding the concepts of Kotlin Programming About This Book ? Practical solutions to your common programming problems with Kotlin 1.1 ? Leverage the functional power of Kotlin to ease your Android application development ? Learn to use Java code in conjunction with Kotlin Who This Book Is For This book will appeal to Kotlin developers keen to find solutions for their common programming problems. Java programming knowledge would be an added advantage. What You Will Learn ? Understand the basics and object-oriented concepts of Kotlin Programming ? Explore the full potential of collection frameworks in Kotlin ? Work with SQLite databases in Android, make network calls, and fetch data over a network ? Use Kotlin's Anko library for efficient and quick Android development ? Uncover some of the best features of Kotlin: Lambdas and Delegates ? Set up web service development environments, write servlets, and build RESTful services with Kotlin ? Learn how to write unit tests, integration tests, and instrumentation/acceptance tests. In Detail The Android team has announced first-class support for Kotlin 1.1. This acts as an added boost to the language and more and more developers are now looking at Kotlin for their application development. This recipe-based book will be your guide to learning the Kotlin programming language. The recipes in this book build from simple language concepts to more complex applications of the language. After the fundamentals of the language, you will learn how to apply the object-oriented programming features of Kotlin 1.1. Programming with Lambdas will show you how to use the functional power of Kotlin. This book has recipes that will get you started with Android programming with Kotlin 1.1, providing quick solutions to common problems encountered during Android app development. You will also be taken through recipes that will teach you microservice and concurrent programming with Kotlin. Going forward, you will learn to test and secure your applications with Kotlin. Finally, this book supplies recipes that will help you migrate your Java code to Kotlin and will help ensure that it's interoperable with Java. Style and approach This book explains concepts related to Kotlin Programming using a practical approach and with the help of easy-to-follow recipes.

Learn, develop, and design applications using the new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM About This Book ? Implement business logic using processes, plugins, and client-side *s with MS Dynamics 365 ? Develop custom CRM solutions to improve your business applications ? A comprehensive guide that covers the new features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and increasingly advanced topics. Who This Book Is For This book targets skilled developers who are looking to build business-solution software and are new to application development in Microsoft Dynamics 365, especially for CRM. What You Will Learn ? Discover new designers tools included in Dynamics 365 CRM ? Develop apps using the platform-agnostic Web API ? Leverage Azure Extensions to design cloud-aware applications ? Learn how to implement CRUD operation ? Create integrated real-world apps using Microsoft PowerApps and Flow by combining services such as Twitter, Facebook, and SharePoint ? Configure and use Artificial Intelligence Azure Cognitive Services for Recommendation and Text Analytic services In Detail Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is the most trusted name in enterprise-level customer relationship management. Thelatest version of Dynamics CRM comes with the important addition of exciting features guaranteed to make your life easier. It comes straight off the shelf with a whole new frontier of updated business rules, process enhancements, SDK methods, and other enhancements. This book will introduce you to the components of the new designer tools, such as SiteMap, App Module, and Visual Designer for Business Processes. Going deeper, this book teaches you how to develop custom SaaS applications leveraging the features of PowerApps available in Dynamics 365.Further, you will learn how to automate business processes using Microsoft Flow, and then we explore Web API, the most important platform update in Dynamics 365 CRM. Here, you'll also learn how to implement Web API in custom applications. You will learn how to write an Azure-aware plugin to design and integrate cloud-aware solutions. The book concludes with configuring services using newly released features such as Editable grids, Data Export Service, LinkedIn Integration, Relationship Insights, and Live Assist. Style and approach The book takes a pragmatic approach, exploring Dynamics 365 and its CRM features with the help of real-world scenarios.

Get a problem-solution approach enriched with code examples for practical and easy comprehension About This Book ? Explore the use of more than 40 best-of-breed plug-ins for improving efficiency ? Secure and maintain Jenkins 2.x by integrating it with LDAP and CAS, which is a Single Sign-on solution ? Efficiently build advanced pipelines with pipeline as code, thus increasing your team's productivity Who This Book Is For If you are a Java developer, a software architect, a technical project manager, a build manager, or a development or QA engineer, then this book is ideal for you. A basic understanding of the software development life cycle and Java development is needed, as well as a rudimentary understanding of Jenkins. What You Will Learn ? Install and Configure Jenkins 2.x on AWS and Azure ? Explore effective ways to manage and monitor Jenkins 2.x ? Secure Jenkins 2.x using Matrix-based Security ? Deploying a WAR file from Jenkins 2.x to Azure App Services and AWS Beanstalk ? Automate deployment of application on AWS and Azure PaaS ? Continuous Testing – Unit Test Execution, Functional Testing and Load Testing In Detail Jenkins 2.x is one of the most popular Continuous Integration servers in the market today. It was designed to maintain, secure, communicate, test, build, and improve the software development process. This book will begin by guiding you through steps for installing and configuring Jenkins 2.x on AWS and Azure. This is followed by steps that enable you to manage and monitor Jenkins 2.x. You will also explore the ways to enhance the overall security of Jenkins 2.x. You will then explore the steps involved in improving the code quality using SonarQube. Then, you will learn the ways to improve quality, followed by how to run performance and functional tests against a web application and web services. Finally, you will see what the available plugins are, concluding with best practices to improve quality. Style and approach This book provides a problem-solution approach to some common tasks and some uncommon tasks using Jenkins 2.x and is well-illustrated with practical code examples.

Highly available microservice-based web apps for Cloud with Java About This Book ? Take advantage of the simplicity of Spring to build a full-fledged application ? Let your applications run faster while generating smaller cloud service bills ? Integrate your application with various tools such as Docker and ElasticSearch and use specific tools in Azure and AWS Who This Book Is For Java developers who want to build secure, resilient, robust and scalable applications that are targeted for cloud based deployment, will find this book helpful. Some knowledge of Java, Spring, web programming and public cloud providers (AWS, Azure) should be sufficient to get you through the book. What You Will Learn ? See the benefits of the cloud environment when it comes to variability, provisioning, and tooling support ? Understand the architecture patterns and considerations when developing on the cloud ? Find out how to perform cloud-native techniques/patterns for request routing, RESTful service creation, Event Sourcing, and more ? Create Docker containers for microservices and set up continuous integration using Jenkins ? Monitor and troubleshoot an application deployed in the cloud environment ? Explore tools such as Docker and Kubernetes for containerization and the ELK stack for log aggregation and visualization ? Use AWS and Azure specific tools to design, develop, deploy, and manage applications ? Migrate from monolithic architectures to a cloud native deployment In Detail Businesses today are evolving so rapidly that they are resorting to the elasticity of the cloud to provide a platform to build and deploy their highly scalable applications. This means developers now are faced with the challenge of building build applications that are native to the cloud. For this, they need to be aware of the environment, tools, and resources they’re coding against. If you’re a Java developer who wants to build secure, resilient, robust, and scalable applications that are targeted for cloud-based deployment, this is the book for you. It will be your one stop guide to building cloud-native applications in Java Spring that are hosted in On-prem or cloud providers - AWS and Azure The book begins by explaining the driving factors for cloud adoption and shows you how cloud deployment is different from regular application deployment on a standard data centre. You will learn about design patterns specific to applications running in the cloud and find out how you can build a microservice in Java Spring using REST APIs You will then take a deep dive into the lifecycle of building, testing, and deploying applications with maximum automation to reduce the deployment cycle time. Gradually, you will move on to configuring the AWS and Azure platforms and working with their APIs to deploy your application. Finally, you’ll take a look at API design concerns and their best practices. You’ll also learn how to migrate an existing monolithic application into distributed cloud native applications. By the end, you will understand how to build and monitor a scalable, resilient, and robust cloud native application that is always available and fault tolerant. Style and approach Filled with examples, this book will build you an entire cloud-native application through its course and will stop at each point and explain in depth the functioning and design considerations that will make a robust, highly available application

Discover best practices and troubleshooting solutions when working on ROS About This Book ? Develop complex robotic applications using ROS to interface robot manipulators and mobile robots ? Gain insight into autonomous navigation in mobile robots and motion planning in robot manipulators ? Discover best practices and troubleshooting solutions Who This Book Is For If you are a robotics enthusiast or researcher who want to learn more about building robot applications using ROS, this book is for you. In order to learn from this book, you should have a basic knowledge of ROS, GNU/Linux, and C++ programming concepts. The book is also excellent for programmers who want to explore the advanced features of ROS. What You Will Learn ? Create a robot model with a seven-DOF robotic arm and a differential wheeled mobile robot ? Work with Gazebo and V-REP robotic simulator ? Implement autonomous navigation in differential drive robots using SLAM and AMCL packages ? Explore the ROS Pluginlib, ROS nodelets, and Gazebo plugins ? Interface I/O boards such as Arduino, robot sensors, and high-end actuators ? Simulate and motion plan an ABB and universal arm using ROS Industrial ? Explore the latest version of the ROS framework ? Work with the motion planning of a seven-DOF arm using MoveIt! In Detail In this day and age, robotics has been gaining a lot of traction in various industries where consistency and perfection matter. Automation is achieved via robotic applications and various platforms that support robotics. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a modular software platform to develop generic robotic applications. This book focuses on the most stable release of ROS (Kinetic Kame), discusses advanced concepts, and effectively teaches you programming using ROS. We begin with aninformative overview of the ROS framework, which will give you a clear idea of how ROS works. During the course of this book, you’ll learn to build models of complex robots, and simulate and interface the robot using the ROS MoveIt! motion planning library and ROS navigation stacks. Learn to leverage several ROS packages to embrace your robot models. After covering robot manipulation and navigation, you’ll get to grips with the interfacing I/O boards, sensors, and actuators of ROS. Vision sensors are a key component of robots, and an entire chapter is dedicated to the vision sensor and image elaboration, its interface in ROS and programming. You’ll also understand the hardware interface and simulation of complex robots to ROS and ROS Industrial. At the end of this book, you’ll discover the best practices to follow when programming using ROS. Style and approach This is a simplified guide to help you learn and master advanced topics in ROS using hands-on examples.

Jump into the world of Game AI development About This Book ? Move beyond using libraries to create smart game AI, and create your own AI projects from scratch ? Implement the latest algorithms for AI development and in-game interaction ? Customize your existing game AI and make it better and more efficient to improve your overall game performance Who This Book Is For This book is for game developers with a basic knowledge of game development techniques and some basic programming techniques in C# or C++. What You Will Learn ? Get to know the basics of how to create different AI for different type of games ? Know what to do when something interferes with the AI choices and how the AI should behave if that happens ? Plan the interaction between the AI character and the environment using Smart Zones or Triggering Events ? Use animations correctly, blending one animation into another and rather than stopping one animation and starting another ? Calculate the best options for the AI to move using Pruning Strategies, Wall Distances, Map Preprocess Implementation, and Forced Neighbours ? Create Theta algorithms to the AI to find short and realistic looking paths ? Add many characters into the same scene and make them behave like a realistic crowd In Detail The book starts with the basics examples of AI for different game genres and directly jumps into defining the probabilities and possibilities of the AI character to determine character movement. Next, you’ll learn how AI characters should behave within the environment created. Moving on, you’ll explore how to work with animations. You’ll also plan and create pruning strategies, and create Theta algorithms to find short and realistic looking game paths. Next, you’ll learn how the AI should behave when there is a lot of characters in the same scene. You'll explore which methods and algorithms, such as possibility maps, Forward Chaining Plan, Rete Algorithm, Pruning Strategies, Wall Distances, and Map Preprocess Implementation should be used on different occasions. You’ll discover how to overcome some limitations, and how to deliver a better experience to the player. By the end of the book, you think differently about AI. Style and approach The book has a step-by-step tutorial style approach. The algorithms are explained by implementing them in #.

Over 80 recipes to help you improve vSphere 6.5's performance and solve problems before they arise About This Book ? The practical recipes provide cost-effective and high performance for any application running in a virtual machine ? Contains best practices and troubleshooting techniques to resolve vSphere 6.5 performance issues ? Get a comprehensive coverage of performance issues and solutions including vCenter Server design and virtual machine and application tuning Who This Book Is For If you are a system administrator and are planning to deploy vSphere 6.5 in your organization and want to maximize its performance, then this book is for you. Prior knowledge of the vSphere 6.5 concepts is essential. What You Will Learn ? Understand the VMM Scheduler, cache aware CPU Scheduler, NUMA aware CPU Scheduler, and more during the CPU Performance Design phase ? Get to know the virtual memory reclamation technique, host ballooning monitoring, and swapping activity ? Choose the right platform while designing your vCenter Server, redundant vCenter design, and vCenter SSO and its deployment ? Learn how to use various performance simulation tools ? Design VCSA Server Certificates to minimize security threats ? Use health check tools for storage and boost vSphere 6.5's performance with VAAI and VASA In Detail vSphere is a mission-critical piece of software for many businesses. It is a complex tool, and incorrect design and deployment can create performance related issues that can negatively affect the business. This book is focused on solving these problems as well as providing best practices and performance-enhancing techniques. This edition is fully updated to include all the new features in version 6.5 as well as the latest tools and techniques to keep vSphere performing at its best. This book starts with interesting recipes, such as the interaction of vSphere 6.5 components with physical layers such as CPU, memory, and networking. Then we focus on DRS, resource control design, and vSphere cluster design. Next, you'll learn about storage performance design and how it works with VMware vSphere 6.5. Moving on, you will learn about the two types of vCenter installation and the benefits of each. Lastly, the book covers performance tools that help you get the most out of your vSphere installation. By the end of this book, you will be able to identify, diagnose, and troubleshoot operational faults and critical performance issues in vSphere 6.5. Style and approach This cookbook is written in a practical, helpful style with numerous recipes focusing on answering and providing solutions to common and not-so-common performance issues and problems.

Make sense of your data and predict the unpredictable About This Book ? A unique book that centers around develop six key practical skills needed to develop and implement predictive analytics ? Apply the principles and techniques of predictive analytics to effectively interpret big data ? Solve real-world analytical problems with the help of practical case studies and real-world scenarios taken from the world of healthcare, marketing, and other business domains Who This Book Is For This book is for those with a mathematical/statistics background who wish to understand the concepts, techniques, and implementation of predictive analytics to resolve complex analytical issues. Basic familiarity with a programming language of R is expected. What You Will Learn ? Master the core predictive analytics algorithm which are used today in business ? Learn to implement the six steps for a successful analytics project ? Classify the right algorithm for your requirements ? Use and apply predictive analytics to research problems in healthcare ? Implement predictive analytics to retain and acquire your customers ? Use text mining to understand unstructured data ? Develop models on your own PC or in Spark/Hadoop environments ? Implement predictive analytics products for customers In Detail This is the go-to book for anyone interested in the steps needed to develop predictive analytics solutions with examples from the world of marketing, healthcare, and retail. We'll get started with a brief history of predictive analytics and learn about different roles and functions people play within a predictive analytics project. Then, we will learn about various ways of installing R along with their pros and cons, combined with a step-by-step installation of RStudio, and a de*ion of the best practices for organizing your projects. On completing the installation, we will begin to acquire the skills necessary to input, clean, and prepare your data for modeling. We will learn the six specific steps needed to implement and successfully deploy a predictive model starting from asking the right questions through model development and ending with deploying your predictive model into production. We will learn why collaboration is important and how agile iterative modeling cycles can increase your chances of developing and deploying the best successful model. We will continue your journey in the cloud by extending your skill set by learning about Databricks and SparkR, which allow you to develop predictive models on vast gigabytes of data. Style and Approach This book takes a practical hands-on approach wherein the algorithms will be explained with the help of real-world use cases. It is written in a well-researched academic style which is a great mix of theoretical and practical information. Code examples are supplied for both theoretical concepts as well as for the case studies. Key references and summaries will be provided at the end of each chapter so that you can explore those topics on their own.

Store, search, and analyze your data with ease using Elasticsearch 5.x About This Book ? Get to grips with the basics of Elasticsearch concepts and its APIs, and use them to create efficient applications ? Create large-scale Elasticsearch clusters and perform analytics using aggregation ? This comprehensive guide will get you up and running with Elasticsearch 5.x in no time Who This Book Is For If you want to build efficient search and analytics applications using Elasticsearch, this book is for you. It will also benefit developers who have worked with Lucene or Solr before and now want to work with Elasticsearch. No previous knowledge of Elasticsearch is expected. What You Will Learn ? See how to set up and configure Elasticsearch and Kibana ? Know how to ingest structured and unstructured data using Elasticsearch ? Understand how a search engine works and the concepts of relevance and scoring ? Find out how to query Elasticsearch with a high degree of performance and scalability ? Improve the user experience by using autocomplete, geolocation queries, and much more ? See how to slice and dice your data using Elasticsearch aggregations. ? Grasp how to use Kibana to explore and visualize your data ? Know how to host on Elastic Cloud and how to use the latest X-Pack features such as Graph and Alerting In Detail Elasticsearch is a modern, fast, distributed, scalable, fault tolerant, and open source search and analytics engine. You can use Elasticsearch for small or large applications with billions of documents. It is built to scale horizontally and can handle both structured and unstructured data. Packed with easy-to- follow examples, this book will ensure you will have a firm understanding of the basics of Elasticsearch and know how to utilize its capabilities efficiently. You will install and set up Elasticsearch and Kibana, and handle documents using the Distributed Document Store. You will see how to query, search, and index your data, and perform aggregation-based analytics with ease. You will see how to use Kibana to explore and visualize your data. Further on, you will learn to handle document relationships, work with geospatial data, and much more, with this easy-to-follow guide. Finally, you will see how you can set up and scale your Elasticsearch clusters in production environments. Style and approach This comprehensive guide will get you started with Elasticsearch 5.x, so you build a solid understanding of the basics. Every topic is explained in depth and is supplemented with practical examples to enhance your understanding.

Click your way to automating various business processes using Salesforce Visual Workflow About This Book ? Develop an application using Point and Click with the help of Flow ? Get to grips with various ways to launch a Flow ? Capture data from an external user without using the Visualforce page ? Save user input into the database, and learn how to query and manipulate the data ? Discover various ways to debug and deploy Flow and Process Builder ? Understand the concepts of Subflow and Login Flow ? Handle complex business processes using Process builder and keep them clean ? Use existing or new Flows to work with Salesforce Lightning Experience. Who This Book Is For This book is intended for those who want to use Flows to automate their business requirements by clicking, not coding. No previous experience in computer coding or programming is required. What You Will Learn ? Develop an application using point and click with the help of Flow ? Get to grips with various ways to launch a Flow ? Capture data from an external user without using the Visualforce page ? Save user input into the database, and learn how to query and manipulate the data ? Discover various ways to debug and deploy Flow and Process Builder ? Understand the concepts of Subflow and Login Flow ? Handle complex business processes using Process builder and keep them clean ? Use existing or new Flows to work with Salesforce Lightning Experience. In Detail 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. Style and approach Step by step approch to use Process Builder to solve complex business requirements with the help of Flow

Over 90 recipes to maximize automated solutions and policy-drive application profiles using Cisco ACI About This Book ? Confidently provision your virtual and physical infrastructure for application deployment ? Integrate Cisco ACI with hypervisors and other third party devices ? Packed with powerful recipes to automate your IT operations Who This Book Is For If you are a network administrator, system administrator, or engineer and are aware of the basics of Cisco ACI but want to start using it to automate your tasks, then this book is for you What You Will Learn ? Master the Cisco ACI architecture ? Discover the ACI fabric with easy-to-follow steps ? Set up quality of service within ACI ? Configure external networks with Cisco ACI ? Integrate with VMware and track VMware virtual machines ? Configure apply and verify access policies ? Extend or migrate a VMware virtual-machine LAN inside the ACI fabric ? Monitor ACI with third party tools and troubleshoot issues In Detail Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a tough architecture that automates IT tasks and accelerates data-center application deployments. This book focuses on practical recipes to help you quickly build, manage, and customize hybrid environment for your organization using Cisco ACI. You will begin by understanding the Cisco ACI architecture and its major components. You will then configure Cisco ACI policies and tenants. Next you will connect to hypervisors and other third-party devices. Moving on, you will configure routing to external networks and within ACI tenants and also learn to secure ACI through RBAC. Furthermore, you will understand how to set up quality of service and network programming with REST, XML, Python and so on. Finally you will learn to monitor and troubleshoot ACI in the event of any issues that arise. By the end of the book, you will gain have mastered automating your IT tasks and accelerating the deployment of your applications. Style and approach A set of exciting recipes to automate your IT operations related to datacenters, the Cloud, and networking tasks

Master over 80 object-oriented recipes to create amazing GUIs in Python and revolutionize your applications today About This Book ? Use object-oriented programming to develop amazing GUIs in Python ? Create a working GUI project as a central resource for developing your Python GUIs ? Easy-to-follow recipes to help you develop code using the latest released version of Python Who This Book Is For This book is for intermediate Python programmers who wish to enhance their Python skills by writing powerful GUIs in Python. As Python is such a great and easy to learn language, this book is also ideal for any developer with experience of other languages and enthusiasm to expand their horizon. What You Will Learn ? Create the GUI Form and add widgets ? Arrange the widgets using layout managers ? Use object-oriented programming to create GUIs ? Create Matplotlib charts ? Use threads and talking to networks ? Talk to a MySQL database via the GUI ? Perform unit-testing and internationalizing the GUI ? Extend the GUI with third-party graphical libraries ? Get to know the best practices to create GUIs In Detail Python is a multi-domain, interpreted programming language. It is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. It is often used as a *ing language because of its forgiving syntax and compatibility with a wide variety of different eco-systems. Python GUI Programming Cookbook follows a task-based approach to help you create beautiful and very effective GUIs with the least amount of code necessary. This book will guide you through the very basics of creating a fully functional GUI in Python with only a few lines of code. Each and every recipe adds more widgets to the GUIs we are creating. While the cookbook recipes all stand on their own, there is a common theme running through all of them. As our GUIs keep expanding, using more and more widgets, we start to talk to networks, databases, and graphical libraries that greatly enhance our GUI’s functionality. This book is what you need to expand your knowledge on the subject of GUIs, and make sure you’re not missing out in the long run. Style and approach This programming cookbook consists of standalone recipes, and this approach makes it unique.. While each recipe explains a certain concept, throughout the book you’ll build a more and more advanced GUI, recipe after recipe. In some of the advanced topics, we simply create a new GUI in order to explore these topics in depth.

Take tiny steps to enter the big world of data science through this interesting guide About This Book ? Learn the fundamentals of machine learning and build your own intelligent applications ? Master the art of building your own machine learning systems with this example-based practical guide ? Work with important classification and regression algorithms and other machine learning techniques Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone interested in entering the data science stream with machine learning. Basic familiarity with Python is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Exploit the power of Python to handle data extraction, manipulation, and exploration techniques ? Use Python to visualize data spread across multiple dimensions and extract useful features ? Dive deep into the world of analytics to predict situations correctly ? Implement machine learning classification and regression algorithms from scratch in Python ? Be amazed to see the algorithms in action ? Evaluate the performance of a machine learning model and optimize it ? Solve interesting real-world problems using machine learning and Python as the journey unfolds In Detail Data science and machine learning are some of the top buzzwords in the technical world today. A resurging interest in machine learning is due to the same factors that have made data mining and Bayesian analysis more popular than ever. This book is your entry point to machine learning. This book starts with an introduction to machine learning and the Python language and shows you how to complete the setup. Moving ahead, you will learn all the important concepts such as, exploratory data analysis, data preprocessing, feature extraction, data visualization and clustering, classification, regression and model performance evaluation. With the help of various projects included, you will find it intriguing to acquire the mechanics of several important machine learning algorithms – they are no more obscure as they thought. Also, you will be guided step by step to build your own models from scratch. Toward the end, you will gather a broad picture of the machine learning ecosystem and best practices of applying machine learning techniques. Through this book, you will learn to tackle data-driven problems and implement your solutions with the powerful yet simple language, Python. Interesting and easy-to-follow examples, to name some, news topic classification, spam email detection, online ad click-through prediction, stock prices forecast, will keep you glued till you reach your goal. Style and approach This book is an enticing journey that starts from the very basics and gradually picks up pace as the story unfolds. Each concept is first succinctly defined in the larger context of things, followed by a detailed explanation of their application. Every concept is explained with the help of a project that solves a real-world problem, and involves hands-on work—giving you a deep insight into the world of machine learning. With simple yet rich language—Python—you will understand and be able to implement the examples with ease.