Architect your .NET applications by breaking them into really small pieces—microservices—using this practical, example-based guide About This Book ? Start your microservices journey and understand a broader perspective of microservices development ? Build, deploy, and test microservices using ASP.Net MVC, Web API, and Microsoft Azure Cloud ? Get started with reactive microservices and understand the fundamentals behind it Who This Book Is For This book is for .NET Core developers who want to learn and understand microservices architecture and implement it in their .NET Core applications. It’s ideal for developers who are completely new to microservices or have just a theoretical understanding of this architectural approach and want to gain a practical perspective in order to better manage application complexity. What You Will Learn ? Compare microservices with monolithic applications and SOA ? Identify the appropriate service boundaries by mapping them to the relevant bounded contexts ? Define the service interface and implement the APIs using ASP.NET Web API ? Integrate the services via synchronous and asynchronous mechanisms ? Implement microservices security using Azure Active Directory, OpenID Connect, and OAuth 2.0 ? Understand the operations and scaling of microservices in .NET Core ? Understand the testing pyramid and implement consumer-driven contract using pact net core ? Understand what the key features of reactive microservices are and implement them using reactive extension In Detail Microservices is an architectural style that promotes the development of complex applications as a suite of small services based on business capabilities. This book will help you identify the appropriate service boundaries within the business. We'll start by looking at what microservices are, and what the main characteristics are. Moving forward, you will be introduced to real-life application scenarios, and after assessing the current issues, we will begin the journey of transforming this application by splitting it into a suite of microservices. You will identify the service boundaries, split the application into multiple microservices, and define the service contracts. You will find out how to configure, deploy, and monitor microservices, and configure scaling to allow the application to quickly adapt to increased demand in the future. With an introduction to the reactive microservices, you strategically gain further value to keep your code base simple, focusing on what is more important rather than the messy asynchronous calls. Style and approach This guide serves as a stepping stone that helps .NET Core developers in their microservices architecture. This book provides just enough theory to understand the concepts and apply the examples.

Build scalable, reliable, and cost-effective applications with a serverless architecture About This Book ? Design a real-world serverless application from scratch ? Learn about AWS Lambda function and how to use Lambda functions to glue other AWS Services ? Use the Java programming language and well-known design patterns. Although Java is used for the examples in this book, the concept is applicable across all languages ? Learn to migrate your JAX-RS application to AWS Lambda and API Gateway Who This Book Is For This book is for developers and software architects who are interested in designing on the back end. Since the book uses Java to teach concepts, knowledge of Java is required. What You Will Learn ? Learn to form microservices from bigger Softwares ? Orchestrate and scale microservices ? Design and set up the data flow between cloud services and custom business logic ? Get to grips with cloud provider’s APIs, limitations, and known issues ? Migrate existing Java applications to a serverless architecture ? Acquire deployment strategies ? Build a highly available and scalable data persistence layer ? Unravel cost optimization techniques In Detail Over the past years, all kind of companies from start-ups to giant enterprises started their move to public cloud providers in order to save their costs and reduce the operation effort needed to keep their shops open. Now it is even possible to craft a complex software system consisting of many independent micro-functions that will run only when they are needed without needing to maintain individual servers. The focus of this book is to design serverless architectures, and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, along with decision factors to consider. You will learn how to design a serverless application, get to know that key points of services that serverless applications are based on, and known issues and solutions. The book addresses key challenges such as how to slice out the core functionality of the software to be distributed in different cloud services and cloud functions. It covers basic and advanced usage of these services, testing and securing the serverless software, automating deployment, and more. By the end of the book, you will be equipped with knowledge of new tools and techniques to keep up with this evolution in the IT industry. Style and approach The book takes a pragmatic approach, showing you all the examples you need to build efficient serverless applications.

A practical guide to help you undertand the ability of Apache jMeter to load and performance test various server types in a more efficient way. About This Book ? Use jMeter to create and run tests to improve the performance of your webpages and applications ? Learn to build a test plan for your websites and analyze the results ? Unleash the power of various features and changes introduced in Apache jMeter 3.0 Who This Book Is For This book is for software professionals who want to understand and improve the performance of their applications with Apache jMeter. What You Will Learn ? See why performance testing is necessary and learn how to set up JMeter ? Record and test with JMeter ? Handle various form inputs in JMeter and parse results during testing ? Manage user sessions in web applications in the context of a JMeter test ? Monitor JMeter results in real time ? Perform distributed testing with JMeter ? Get acquainted with helpful tips and best practices for working with JMeter In Detail JMeter is a Java application designed to load and test performance for web application. JMeter extends to improve the functioning of various other static and dynamic resources. This book is a great starting point to learn about JMeter. It covers the new features introduced with JMeter 3 and enables you to dive deep into the new techniques needed for measuring your website performance. The book starts with the basics of performance testing and guides you through recording your first test scenario, before diving deeper into JMeter. You will also learn how to configure JMeter and browsers to help record test plans. Moving on, you will learn how to capture form submission in JMeter, dive into managing sessions with JMeter and see how to leverage some of the components provided by JMeter to handle web application HTTP sessions. You will also learn how JMeter can help monitor tests in real-time. Further, you will go in depth into distributed testing and see how to leverage the capabilities of JMeter to accomplish this. You will get acquainted with some tips and best practices with regard to performance testing. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to take full advantage of the real power behind Apache JMeter. Style and approach The book is a practical guide starting with introducing the readers to the importance of automated testing. It will then be a beginner’s journey from getting introduced to Apache jMeter to an in-detail discussion of more advanced features and possibilities with it.

Build Machine Learning models with a sound statistical understanding. About This Book ? Learn about the statistics behind powerful predictive models with p-value, ANOVA, and F- statistics. ? Implement statistical computations programmatically for supervised and unsupervised learning through K-means clustering. ? Master the statistical aspect of Machine Learning with the help of this example-rich guide to R and Python. Who This Book Is For This book is intended for developers with little to no background in statistics, who want to implement Machine Learning in their systems. Some programming knowledge in R or Python will be useful. What You Will Learn ? Understand the Statistical and Machine Learning fundamentals necessary to build models ? Understand the major differences and parallels between the statistical way and the Machine Learning way to solve problems ? Learn how to prepare data and feed models by using the appropriate Machine Learning algorithms from the more-than-adequate R and Python packages ? Analyze the results and tune the model appropriately to your own predictive goals ? Understand the concepts of required statistics for Machine Learning ? Introduce yourself to necessary fundamentals required for building supervised & unsupervised deep learning models ? Learn reinforcement learning and its application in the field of artificial intelligence domain In Detail Complex statistics in Machine Learning worry a lot of developers. Knowing statistics helps you build strong Machine Learning models that are optimized for a given problem statement. This book will teach you all it takes to perform complex statistical computations required for Machine Learning. You will gain information on statistics behind supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and more. Understand the real-world examples that discuss the statistical side of Machine Learning and familiarize yourself with it. You will also design programs for performing tasks such as model, parameter fitting, regression, classification, density collection, and more. By the end of the book, you will have mastered the required statistics for Machine Learning and will be able to apply your new skills to any sort of industry problem. Style and approach This practical, step-by-step guide will give you an understanding of the Statistical and Machine Learning fundamentals you'll need to build models.

Use scikit-learn to apply machine learning to real-world problems About This Book ? Master popular machine learning models including k-nearest neighbors, random forests, logistic regression, k-means, naive Bayes, and artificial neural networks ? Learn how to build and evaluate performance of efficient models using scikit-learn ? Practical guide to master your basics and learn from real life applications of machine learning Who This Book Is For This book is intended for software engineers who want to understand how common machine learning algorithms work and develop an intuition for how to use them, and for data scientists who want to learn about the scikit-learn API. Familiarity with machine learning fundamentals and Python are helpful, but not required. What You Will Learn ? Review fundamental concepts such as bias and variance ? Extract features from categorical variables, text, and images ? Predict the values of continuous variables using linear regression and K Nearest Neighbors ? Classify documents and images using logistic regression and support vector machines ? Create ensembles of estimators using bagging and boosting techniques ? Discover hidden structures in data using K-Means clustering ? Evaluate the performance of machine learning systems in common tasks In Detail Machine learning is the buzzword bringing computer science and statistics together to build smart and efficient models. Using powerful algorithms and techniques offered by machine learning you can automate any analytical model. This book examines a variety of machine learning models including popular machine learning algorithms such as k-nearest neighbors, logistic regression, naive Bayes, k-means, decision trees, and artificial neural networks. It discusses data preprocessing, hyperparameter optimization, and ensemble methods. You will build systems that classify documents, recognize images, detect ads, and more. You will learn to use scikit-learn’s API to extract features from categorical variables, text and images; evaluate model performance, and develop an intuition for how to improve your model’s performance. By the end of this book, you will master all required concepts of scikit-learn to build efficient models at work to carry out advanced tasks with the practical approach. Style and approach This book is motivated by the belief that you do not understand something until you can describe it simply. Work through toy problems to develop your understanding of the learning algorithms and models, then apply your learnings to real-life problems.

Harness the power of Scala to program Spark and analyze tonnes of data in the blink of an eye! About This Book ? Learn Scala’s sophisticated type system that combines Functional Programming and object-oriented concepts ? Work on a wide array of applications, from simple batch jobs to stream processing and machine learning ? Explore the most common as well as some complex use-cases to perform large-scale data analysis with Spark Who This Book Is For Anyone who wishes to learn how to perform data analysis by harnessing the power of Spark will find this book extremely useful. No knowledge of Spark or Scala is assumed, although prior programming experience (especially with other JVM languages) will be useful to pick up concepts quicker. What You Will Learn ? Understand object-oriented & functional programming concepts of Scala ? In-depth understanding of Scala collection APIs ? Work with RDD and DataFrame to learn Spark’s core abstractions ? Analysing structured and unstructured data using SparkSQL and GraphX ? Scalable and fault-tolerant streaming application development using Spark structured streaming ? Learn machine-learning best practices for classification, regression, dimensionality reduction, and recommendation system to build predictive models with widely used algorithms in Spark MLlib & ML ? Build clustering models to cluster a vast amount of data ? Understand tuning, debugging, and monitoring Spark applications ? Deploy Spark applications on real clusters in Standalone, Mesos, and YARN In Detail Scala has been observing wide adoption over the past few years, especially in the field of data science and analytics. Spark, built on Scala, has gained a lot of recognition and is being used widely in productions. Thus, if you want to leverage the power of Scala and Spark to make sense of big data, this book is for you. The first part introduces you to Scala, helping you understand the object-oriented and functional programming concepts needed for Spark application development. It then moves on to Spark to cover the basic abstractions using RDD and DataFrame. This will help you develop scalable and fault-tolerant streaming applications by analyzing structured and unstructured data using SparkSQL, GraphX, and Spark structured streaming. Finally, the book moves on to some advanced topics, such as monitoring, configuration, debugging, testing, and deployment. You will also learn how to develop Spark applications using SparkR and PySpark APIs, interactive data analytics using Zeppelin, and in-memory data processing with Alluxio. By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of Spark, and you will be able to perform full-stack data analytics with a feel that no amount of data is too big. Style and approach Filled with practical examples and use cases, this book will hot only help you get up and running with Spark, but will also take you farther down the road to becoming a data scientist.

Can she drag him out of paradise? Landing reclusive marketing genius Dane Montgomery would be the coup of Ophelia Reid’s executive recruiting career—and her ticket to her dream job in Paris. It would also be practically impossible. With Dane firmly entrenched in his idyllic Hawaiian coffee plantation, and his intolerance of headhunters, luring him back to the New York rat race was a long shot. If Ophelia failed, she sacrificed her dream. And if she succeeded, Dane sacrificed his. Neither could afford to give in—or give up. But spending a week with Dane, exploring the island…and their growing attraction…may weaken Ophelia’s resolve. And Dane’s starting to see that New York has one thing Hawaii doesn’t—Ophelia Reid. Too bad she’s moving to Paris!

Gone Marcie Powers sees her missing son everywhere, until she claims to have found him once more and there is something different in her tone. Suddenly her estranged husband, Joseph, finally believes her. Now they must trek through the bayou at the whims of a kidnapper to save their son or risk losing everything all over again…

MARRIAGE IS NOT HER MISSION Escaping a society wedding, Annabelle Baldwin followed her heart to Liberia to pursue her calling as a missionary. But when an attempted kidnapping lands her under the protection of Stewart Hastings, Anna’s journey takes a new turn. The wounded war veteran needs a guide through the jungle. It’s a job the under-funded missionary can’t refuse, despite the feelings Stewart stirs in her guarded heart. Stewart knows he won't succeed without Anna’s expertise. And when danger puts her life at risk, he realizes he cannot live without Anna by his side. But what will it take for a man who has lost his faith to capture the heart of a woman who lives for hers?

THE TEXAN’S DILEMMA Bounty hunter Tom McCain works alone. He couldn’t save his childhood friend, but he’ll deliver her six-year-old daughter, Sarah Jane, to the only family she has left: a wealthy great-grandfather in Texas. But that means tangling with the fiery schoolteacher who wants to adopt her. Katie O’Malley is determined to give Sarah Jane a fresh start away from the tragedy of her early life. Even the high-handed Mr. McCain can’t stop her. But when a secret from Sarah Jane’s past threatens the young girl’s life, joining forces with Tom is Katie’s only option. They’ll need all their courage to turn a perilous future into a home, a family—and a dream come true.

世界各地之有味笑話如恆河沙數，素來是廣受大眾歡迎的流行讀本。本書作者Mr. C特別編撰「小小笑話」系列，精選妙絕抵死的笑話匯集成篇，以輕巧且價錢相宜的迷你版本出版，為你帶來經濟實惠的閱讀樂趣和享受。除了豐富精選的笑話，書首更有得意有趣的遊戲，供大家互動玩耍一下，順便先來個大腦熱熱身，然後再放開懷抱笑個痛快。 《癲癲WORKING》及《公主病駕到》分別取材為Office笑話及男女關係笑話，詼諧抵死，適合成人閱讀。 《囧囧CLUB》及《女王捉字室》則取材為校園笑話(classroom jokes)，幽默搞笑，適合學生閱讀。

《拆走醫院的炸彈》以40個關於醫生、病人、護士及家屬的真實個案，改編成活潑生動的故事去講述醫患關係，出版未足半年初版3000冊已售罄，反應理想。 本書文字簡短精練，盡量保留病房內外、醫生護士與病人及家屬之間衝突中的言行，其中也有病房內外的特殊用語、有趣代號甚或爛gag等，生動傳神。 其實人的一生總離不開醫院、醫生與護士。不過，由於種種言語、心理、行為上的誤會、誤解、矛盾、衝突，醫患之間始終不容易建立起互信、互諒的關係，因此醫院內「炸彈」處處！如何拆彈？！ 細閱本書，讀者除了可看到病房眾生相外，更可嘗試代入角色，想像一下炸彈引爆前的凝重、爆發一刻的顫震，以及爆後心理的忐忑。本書更試圖從第三者的角度，提出「拆彈」的忠告與實踐良策。可讀之餘，發人深省。 《拆走醫院的炸彈》新版除了保留了故事、沙龍照片、勵志金句外，在內容上也作出了修訂；特別的是更換上新裝。今次伊利沙伯醫院破天荒邀請到醫管局主席胡定旭、香港防癌會主席高永文醫生，聯同一眾演藝界明星名人葛民輝、羅蘭、廖安麗，以及譚玉瑛一起粉墨登場，角色扮演醫生、病人、護士及家屬，拍攝封面及內頁照片；星光熠熠，令人耳目一新！

風──創作路，多風暴；風眼中，看平靜。 花──風旅中，遇花海；學種花，孕新生。 雪──花落時，雪堵路；寒道裡，享甘薯。 月──雪告別，前路明；月照下，見新遊。 作者在書中以自然之景──風、花、雪、月為幹，既說一己的創作歷程，又細說對人世間的萬事萬物的觀察，體現作者的觀點與視覺。 綣綣塵世間，我們會遇到風雨，但風雨過後，得享霎時平靜，柳暗花明，未至絕路。碰到寒雪堵路，調整心境，實是享甘薯的好時光。人生有高有低，或臨絕處卻又逢生。作者欲藉文、圖道出的，正是此理。 此作以清新的繪圖為主，配以精簡的文字，感悟各式各樣人生小道理，讓讀者在閱讀之時，享受一刻的清泉，澄明身心。 內文範例： 同生同等。 兒時，我無聊跳高伸手蜻蜓，但牠總會飛高來欺負我； 當時我還無知地認為長高後，牠就難逃我的魔掌。 今天，牠就在我身邊飛過，當然人大了， 我沒伸出那頑皮手來捉牠。 因我明白，不是現在我的高度足以捉到牠， 而是牠因快下雨而低飛。 我早就不應跟牠比較高低，即使現在我能力比牠高，亦不等於我就要向牠施展魔爪， 因從沒有誰想打倒誰，而是本身就是應該共存。

本書從提高小學生寫字能力的角度出發，以香港教育局課程發展處中國語文教育組編訂的《香港小學學習字詞表》為基礎，參考衆多小學語文教材，精選350個小學階段使用頻率、構字構詞能力強的漢字，從偏旁、筆畫、筆順等方面對漢字逐一解構，幫助小學生掌握正確的漢字書寫規則。

本書運用現代語言學方法，將粵語作為一個完整的語言系統，從詞彙、詞法、句法等方面，全面論述粵語語法上的種種表現，兼論粵語音系和各種拼音系統的異同。一方面可作為研究和學習粵語的教材，讓讀者對粵語的語言特點有較為完整的認識，；另一方面，以讀者熟悉的具體語言事實來說明比較抽象的理論，做到既能介紹粵語特色，又能普及語言學基本概念，亦適合所有對粵語有興趣的普通讀者閱讀。

本書精選小學生8種常用修辭法，包括：比喻、擬人、排比、反復、設問、反問、誇張、對偶等，提供3百多條測試題目，輔以淺白的文字加以解說，幫助學生讀者把握運用有關修辭的用法。為增添閱讀趣味，本書加入了生動的故事，幽默的漫畫和形式豐富的遊戲，務求做到「學」與「樂」統一。

重點探討慢性腎病中西治療比較及配合，並清楚列出容易產生的併發症，慢性腎衰竭的狀況，提供實用診治和個人調養方法。提供中藥藥饍、食療、生活方式調護，並輔以簡易的菜餚、湯水等食譜，讀者可以自行烹調食用。

香港中文大歷史系成立於1963年，至2013年已經歷了五十年。在這五十年的歲月中，歷史系的前賢和師輩奠下了嚴肅的學術風氣與扎實的研究根基。莘莘學子，遂得以承傳錢穆、牟潤孫、全漢昇、嚴耕望、王德昭、孫國棟等眾多史學名宿的治學精神。 為了慶祝歷史系踏入金禧之年，我們邀請校友撰文論述前輩老師的個人風骨、學術成就、治史理念、研究心得及教學旨趣等，編成此書以總結五十年來歷史系前賢的開創、耕耘之功及治史業績，好讓後輩繼往開來，延續並發展創系以來的理念和精神。

全書包含幾個英語語法範疇：易混淆詞、單複數、量詞、數目詞彙、同音異義詞、短語動詞、慣用語、明喻和隱喻等 內容選自余黎青萍於報章撰寫的專欄文章，談及英語學習不同的重要範疇，作者從日常生活、工作、傳媒報導等搜集實例，從反方面指出措辭不當、似是而非的毛病，也從正面說明如何學好英語，如何活用 phrasal verbs 及 idioms，幫助讀者明白英語如何可表達得傳神。

本書從鍛鍊體魄的好處開始，仔細講解跑步前的風險評估，按個人體能和目標設計的多種長跑訓練計劃和訓練方法，如長距離跑、節奏跑及間歇跑的要點，還詳述如何預防受傷、處理傷患、配合飲食營養，加強鍛鍊效果。

「極短篇」，又有人稱之為「小小說」或「掌上小說」。寫「極短篇」，極不容易，在如此小的篇幅內說故事，從頭到尾，一眼望盡，瑕瑜立見，無可隱藏，其實「難度」相當高。 但本書作者卻是寫「極短篇」的高手，書中精選了她的三十篇佳作，當中的故事，既有愛情的，也有人情的，甚至奇幻的，題材豐富，異彩紛呈，情節引人入勝，結局又出人意表。每個故事讀後，相信讀者或會會心微笑，或會擊節驚歎，又或會領悟到一點點人生的道理。