Webster's New World Student Writing Handbook

Now more portable and easier to navigate!

Webster's New World Student Writing Handbook, Fifth Edition has been refreshed and updated to give you a more portable and efficient reference for all of your high school and college writing needs!

From essays to feature articles, from book reports to scripts, you'll get coverage of all thirty-seven types of student writing, good writing principles, subject-specific writing samples, and important considerations for writing and the Internet. You'll enjoy updated coverage and improvements including:

• All-new sections on term papers

• A sleek interior design that makes content easier to navigate

• Brand-new coverage of specific considerations when writing for various subjects, including English, social sciences, science, business, and technical subjects

• Expanded content on job applications, college application essays, special program admission essays, and scholarship essays

• A companion Web site features concrete examples of the topics covered in each core subject area

Acclaimed by fellow students, educators, and parents, Webster's New World Student Writing Handbook is your one-stop reference for writing top-quality essays, term papers, and reports—on any school subject.

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WordPress Bible

Install WordPress and go beyond blogging

WordPress is so flexible that developers are now tapping it to create robust applications for content, contact, and e-mail management. Whether you're a casual blogger or programming pro, this comprehensive guide covers WordPress from the basics through advanced application development. Learn how to use custom plugins and themes, retrieve data, maintain security, use social media, and modify your blog without changing any core code. You'll even get to know the ecosystem of products that surrounds this popular, open-source tool.

• Enhance your blog's findability in the search engines and beyond

• Discover hooks and leverage the WordPress event-driven programming interface

• Create WordPress widgets in only a few minutes

• Explore alternate uses of WordPress

• Enhance your blog with WordPress MU

• Ensure your plugins maintain future compatibility

• Create highly customizable and dynamic themes using template tags

• Learn best security practices as a user and developer

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Beginning HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript

An indispensable introductory guide to creating web pages using the most up-to-date standards

This beginner guide shows you how to use XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create compelling Web sites. While learning these technologies, you will discover coding practices such as writing code that works on multiple browsers including mobile devices, how to use AJAX frameworks to add interactivity to your pages, and how to ensure your pages meet accessible requirements.

Packed with real-world examples, the book not only teaches you how to write Web sites using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript, but it also teaches you design principles that help you create attractive web sites and practical advice on how to make web pages more usable. In addition, special checklists and appendices review key topics and provide helpful references that re-enforce the basics you've learned.

• Serves as an ideal beginners guide to writing web pages using XHTML
• Explains how to use CSS to make pages more appealing and add interactivity to pages using JavaScript and AJAX frameworks
• Share advice on design principles and how to make pages more attractive and offers practical help with usability and accessibility
• Features checklists and appendices that review key topics

This introductory guide is essential reading for getting started with using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript to create exciting and compelling Web sites.

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Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

A hands-on resource for SQL Server 2008 troubleshooting methods and tools

SQL Server administrators need to ensure that SQL Server remains running 24/7. Authored by leading SQL Server experts and MVPs, this book provides in-depth coverage of best practices based on a deep understanding of the internals of both SQL Server and the Windows operating system.

You'll get a thorough look at the SQL Server database architecture and internals as well as Windows OS internals so that you can approach troubleshooting with a solid grasp of the total processing environment. Armed with this comprehensive understanding, readers will then learn how to use a suite of tools for troubleshooting performance problems whether they originate on the database server or operating system side.

Topics Covered:

• SQL Server Architecture
• Understanding Memory
• SQL Server Waits and Extended Events
• Working with Storage
• CPU and Query Processing
• Locking and Latches
• Knowing Tempdb
• Defining Your Approach To Troubleshooting
• Viewing Server Performance with PerfMon and the PAL Tool
• Tracing SQL Server with SQL Trace and Profiler
• Consolidating Data Collection with SQLDiag and the PerfStats Script
• Introducing RML Utilities for Stress Testing and Trace File Analysis
• Bringing It All Together with SQL Nexus
• Using Management Studio Reports and the Performance Dashboard
• Using SQL Server Management Data Warehouse
• Shortcuts to Efficient Data Collection and Quick Analysis

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Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery

Create real-time, highly interactive apps quickly with the powerful XMPP protocol

XMPP is a robust protocol used for a wide range of applications, including instant messaging, multi-user chat, voice and video conferencing, collaborative spaces, real-time gaming, data synchronization, and search. This book teaches you how to harness the power of XMPP in your own apps and presents you with all the tools you need to build the next generation of apps using XMPP or add new features to your current apps. Featuring the JavaScript language throughout and making use of the jQuery library, the book contains several XMPP apps of increasing complexity that serve as ideal learning tools.

• Learn about XMPP's instant messaging features, such as rosters, presence and subscriptions, and private chats

• Covers XMPP stanzas, stanza errors, and client protocol syntax and semantics

• Discusses service discovery, data forms, and publish-subscribe

• Addresses XMPP programming-related topics such as application design, event handling, and combining existing protocols

• Details the best ways to deploy XMPP-based applications

• Explains how to use Strophe's plugin system and how to create your own plugins

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Silverlight 3 Programmer's Reference

This valuable reference—in full color—explains the major new release of Silverlight 3 which is dramatically improved over previous versions and makes the development of powerful Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs) achievable for everyone. Packed with examples and written by a highly-seasoned team of developers and designers, this book guides you through the languages, tools, and techniques that are used to build applications on the Silverlight 3 platform (Build 40522). Each chapter provides a mini-tutorial on the respective topic, and the examples serve to both educate and inspire you. The information in this book is structured to help prepare you for the real-world challenges you may face when building applications on the Silverlight platform. By the end of the book, you’ll have gained a thorough understanding of how Silverlight applications are architected, developed, and designed.

This book covers:

· XAML basics

· Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008, Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight Runtime and SDK

Transforming text with render transforms

· Using graphics, visuals and adding media for a richer user experience

· Building application, making it come alive and responding to user activity

· Setting up a control project and using a custom control in an application

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Accelerated C# 2010

C# 2010 offers powerful new features, and this book is the fastest path to mastering them—and the rest of C#—for both experienced C# programmers moving to C# 2010 and programmers moving to C# from another object-oriented language. Many books introduce C#, but very few also explain how to use it optimally with the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). This book teaches both core C# language concepts and how to wisely employ C# idioms and object-oriented design patterns to exploit the power of C# and the CLR.

This book is both a rapid tutorial and a permanent reference. You'll quickly master C# syntax while learning how the CLR simplifies many programming tasks. You’ll also learn best practices that ensure your code will be efficient, reusable, and robust. Why spend months or years discovering the best ways to design and code C# when this book will show you how to do things the right way from the start?

• Comprehensively and concisely explains both C# 2008 and C# 2010 features
• Focuses on the language itself and on how to use C# 2010 proficiently for all .NET application development.
• Concentrates on how C# features work and how to best use them for robust, high-performance code

What you'll learn

• How C# works with and exploits the CLR
• How to use arrays, collections, and iterators
• How to handle events with delegates and anonymous functions
• How to design and use generic types and methods
• How to thread efficiently and robustly
• How C# anonymous types, lamba expressions, and extension methods work and how to use them

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Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft is introducing a large number of changes to the way that the .NET Framework operates. Familiar technologies are being altered, best practices replaced, and developer methodologies adjusted. Many developers find it hard to keep up with the pace of change across .NET's ever-widening array of technologies. You may know what's happening in C#, but how about the Azure cloud? How is that going to affect your work? What are the limitations of the new pLINQ syntax? What you need is a roadmap. A guide to help you see the innovations that matter and to give you a head start on the opportunities available in the new framework.

Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010 is designed to provide you with just that roadmap. It serves as a no-nonsense primer that will help experienced .NET developers understand the impact of the new framework and its associated technologies.This book will keep you updated on the changes and help you to seize new opportunities confidently and quickly.

What you'll learn

• Get an overview and brief history of each new or changing technology that puts it into context
• Familiarize yourself with key concepts and opportunities through highly accessible tutorials
• Understand how to perform common tasks in new technology areas such as pLINQ
• Gain expert performance tips
• See examples of real-world applications of each technology to help you learn how a technology can be put to work

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Pro Dynamic .NET 4.0 Applications: Data-Driven Programming for the .NET Framework

As a developer you are likely painfully aware that not all features of an application can be anticipated when the software ships. In order to cope with these eventualities and save yourself time (and perhaps money), it makes sense to write your applications in such a way that end users can be made as independent of the developers as possible. Giving your users the power to make changes to the way the application operates once it has shipped gives them more control over the way the application works, while reducing the frequency with which you need to redistribute application files, creating a win-win situation.

This book explains how to give users the power to create additional data-entry fields, validation logic, and new reports without assistance from the application developer. You will learn how to do this for both desktop (C# and WPF) and web (ASP) applications.

What you'll learn

• How to allow the user to create validation logic at runtime
• How to define and instantiate controls at runtime and the pitfalls of doing so
• How to create data-driven reports using Excel, Crystal Reports, and SQL Server Reporting Services
• How to design a database structure for optimizing data-driven applications
• How to build a user interface that allows users to modify their application visually

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone wanting to distribute an application in which the user needs to be as independent of the developer as possible. By using the techniques described in the book, the user will have the power to make modifications to his own applications, and the developer will reduce the frequency with which he needs to redistribute EXEs.

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Networking Bible

Everything you need to set up and maintain large or small networks

Barrie Sosinsky

Networking Bible

Create a secure network for home or enterprise

Learn basic building blocks and standards

Set up for broadcasting, streaming, and more

The book you need to succeed!

Your A-Z guide to networking essentials

Whether you're setting up a global infrastructure or just networking two computers at home, understanding of every part of the process is crucial to the ultimate success of your system. This comprehensive book is your complete, step-by-step guide to networking—from different architectures and hardware to security, diagnostics, Web services, and much more. Packed with practical, professional techniques and the very latest information, this is the go-to resource you need to succeed.

• Demystify the basics: network stacks, bus architectures, mapping, and bandwidth

• Get up to speed on servers, interfaces, routers, and other necessary hardware

• Explore LANs, WANs, Wi-Fi, TCP/IP, and other types of networks

• Set up domains, directory services, file services, caching, and mail protocols

• Enable broadcasting, multicasting, and streaming media

• Deploy VPNs, firewalls, encryption, and other security methods

• Perform diagnostics and troubleshoot your systems

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Python Testing: Beginner's Guide

An easy and convenient approach to testing your powerful Python projects

• Covers everything you need to test your code in Python
• Easiest and enjoyable approach to learn Python testing
• Write, execute, and understand the result of tests in the unit test framework
• Packed with step-by-step examples and clear explanations

In Detail

Automated testing moves much of the labor of testing off the developer and makes it easier as well as quicker to find bugs and fix them. Automated tests run faster, increase test coverage, and lower costs. However, testing is neither an easy process nor remotely exciting for most developers. But with the right techniques and tools, testing can become a simple and gratifying part of the development process.

With this helpful guide - from an expert - in your hand, testing will not be a tiresome topic for you anymore. You will learn how to test your Python projects in the easiest way, making other parts of the development process easier and more enjoyable.

This book covers the tools and techniques of automated testing and test-driven development. Starting from the very basics, the chapters introduce new tools and techniques in simple, accessible language with step-by-step examples. You will explore how to make testing easier and more accurate with Python's doctest module and learn test-driven development using the unittest framework. You will also learn how to keep your units separate from each other and discover a simple and easy way to integrate Mocker and unittest. Next, we cover integration testing and web application testing.

Automated testing gives developers better feedback, faster and more often. Bugs get found sooner and fixed better, with less effort. By the end of this book, you will have all of the skills needed to benefit from automated testing.

What you will learn from this book

• Make testing easy and convenient with Python's doctest module, which lets you put your tests right into your doc strings
• Drive development using unit testing and learn how it can make the process quicker
• Explore the assorted features Mocker provides to help you keep units separate from each other and customize it to suit your needs
• Embed your tests in a controlled and temporary environment using test fixtures
• Simplify the integration of unittest and Mocker using Python Mocker's MockerTestCase
• Automatically find and execute tests using Nose - a unittest-based testing framework for Python that makes writing and running tests easier
• Write tests for web applications using Twill and integrate it's capabilities as a library into Python testing code
• Create integration tests and run them to see if your programs work correctly in concert with each other
• Run Nose automatically when your version control software detects changes in the source code
• Set up the Buildbot automated continuous integration system to run your tests repeatedly over many different environments

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Plone 3 for Education

Break the webmaster bottleneck by empowering instructors and staff

• Enable instructors and staff to represent courses using Plone's built-in content types--news items, collections, and events--without writing a single line of code
• Embed sound and video into your course materials, news feeds, or anywhere on your Plone site
• Written by Erik Rose--member of the Plone 4 and 5 Framework Teams
• Expert guidance on using the best plug-ins so that you can get the best out of your site right from the beginning

In Detail

Plone enables your faculty and staff to manage their own web sites, but some assembly is still required. How do you represent courses online? What about assignment schedules, lecture podcasts, and collaborative spaces? That's where this book comes in--it takes the burden of routine updates off your web team by harnessing the world's most advanced free content management system.

This is the school web team's missing manual. Through step-by-step examples covering 11 common educational use cases, you'll learn how to take the box of parts provided by Plone, combine them with best-of-breed third-party plug-ins, and turn out a dynamic web environment that will be a joy to use for faculty, enhance staff productivity, and engage the student body.

Plone is powerful but complex. Its ease of use for end users belies a wealth of under-the-hood features and third-party add-ons that are time-consuming for back-end web teams to sort through. The book guides you on proven paths through the forest of potential that you encounter during design and deployment, starting you with reasonable choices for each of 11 common education-domain use cases. Each one enumerates the value it brings to your site and guides you step-by-step through an implementation suitable for the vast majority of cases, meaning you can spend your time addressing the unique needs of your institution--not reinventing the wheel.

What you will learn from this book

• Build common e-learning tasks in Plone: assignment schedules, course materials, online turn-in forms, and class interaction using podcasts and forums
• Build school-wide and department-wise directories collecting contact info, biographies, and more
• Take care of necessities, like customizing the look of your site, setting up a production server, and running incremental backups
• Integrate audio and video with Plone: weaving it into pages, populating portlets, and podcasting it to the world
• Harness Plone4Artists Calendar product to improve the display of event listings
• Find tips on information architecture and usability, learning from the successes and mistakes of several sites

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Illustrated WPF

Windows Presentation Foundation is Microsoft’s newest API for creating Windows applications. It gives the programmer the ability to produce dazzling, graphics–rich programs easily without having to delve into the messy details of the graphics subsystem.

To use this power, however, the programmer must learn new concepts for laying out pages and displaying graphics. Illustrated WPF presents these concepts clearly and visually—making them easier to understand and retain.

What you’ll learn

• The important new concepts underlying programming in WPF, including the visual tree, the logical tree, dependency properties, and routed events.
• The XAML markup language and how it is used to create and initialize objects in WPF. You’ll also learn how XAML and C# code work together to producing stunning programs.
• How to lay out screens and graphics using WPF’s various panel types, and how to achieve a consistent visual appearance throughout a program, using resources, styles, and templates.
• How to bind visual elements to data sources.
• How to perform graphics transformations to produce eye–catching displays, and how to use animation to produce pages that are alive with action.
• How to use the WPF document types for text layout and navigation.

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Beginning Silverlight 3

Silverlight design tools have important differences compared to those used to create Ajax and JavaScript functionality. Robert Lair takes you on a tour of all the tools, including Microsoft Expression Design, which plays an important part in creating Silverlight assets; Microsoft Expression Blend, which is used to build user interaction for Silverlight elements; and Microsoft Visual Studio, which manages the interaction between designers and developers, providing the coding environment for "nuts and bolts" wiring.

Once you've mastered the basics, you'll move on to gaining a more in-depth knowledge of some of the groundbreaking new features of the Silverlight technology.

The growing popularity of Web 2.0 applications is increasing user expectations for high-quality web site design, presentation, and functionality. It is into this climate that Microsoft is releasing Silverlight 3, the third iteration of its cross-browser web presentation technology and the second to ride on top of the .NET platform. Beginning Sliverlight 3 brings you to the cutting-edge of Web 2.0 application design and includes plenty of practical guidance to get you started straightaway.

What you'll learn

• Discover the tools needed for Silverlight 3 development, the roles each plays, and how they interact to produce a seamless result.
• Understand the fundamental concepts and techniques that lie at the heart of every successful Silverlight application and how to apply them to your own projects.
• Explore the new features and coding practices Silverlight gives to you as a developer that sets it apart from other web-development tools.

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Pro Linux Embedded Systems

Today, Linux is included with nearly every embedded platform. Embedded developers can take a more modern route and spend more time tuning Linux and taking advantage of open source code to build more robust, feature-rich applications. While Gene Sally does not neglect porting Linux to new hardware, modern embedded hardware is more sophisticated than ever: most systems include the capabilities found on desktop systems. This book is written from the perspective of a user employing technologies and techniques typically reserved for desktop systems.

• Modern guide for developing embedded Linux systems
• Shows you how to work with existing Linux embedded system, while still teaching how to port Linux
• Explains best practices from somebody who has done it before

What you’ll learn

• The anatomy of an embedded Linux project
• How to create an embedded Linux development environment
• How to configure and build an embedded Linux kernel
• How to configure and build open source projects for embedded systems
• How to minimize resources and boot times
• What resources are available in open source to help you build your project

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Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach is yourpractical companion to developing rich, interactive web applicationswith Microsoft's latest technology. This book tackles common problemsand scenarios that on-the-job developers face every day by revealingcode and detailed solutions. You’ll quickly be able to integratereal-world, functioning code into your applications—and save hours ofcoding time.

The recipes included in Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approachhave been carefully selected and tested with the professional developerin mind. You'll find problems stated clearly and succinctly, artfulsolutions explored, and ample discussion of the code and context soyou're immediately clear how the solution will support your project.

Enjoy practical coverage of Silverlight development in many projects and contexts, including:

• Designing complete, rich, interactive user experiences
• Manipulating content and the runtime environment through the Silverlight Plug-in Runtime API
• Consuming,transforming, and displaying content in your Silverlight webapplication through XML, LINQ-based data access, and isolated storage
• Building custom controls for your Silverlight project
• Integrating rich media, including audio and video, to create a very dynamic user interface and experience
• Usingnew Silverlight features, including .NET Framework integration, the useof dynamic languages like Python and Ruby in Silverlight development,and digital rights management support

Find instant solutions, comprehensive Silverlight coverage, and time-saving expert advice, all in Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach.

What you'll learn

• Work with fundamental aspects of the Silverlight and XAML programming model
• Design Silverlight user experiences
• Use and change the Silverlight runtime environment
• Manipulate and take advantage of browser DOM integration
• Discover solutions to custom networking and communication scenarios, including messaging and web service integration
• Work with structured data and storage, including using LINQ to access data
• Develop custom controls
• Integrate rich media into your Silverlight application

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Getting StartED with Windows 7

Welcome to the new world of Windows 7. Whether this is your first time with Windows, you're switching from another operating system, or you're upgrading from Windows XP or Vista, you’ll find a wealth of new ideas and innovations in Windows 7. The mission with this release was to make everyday tasks faster and easier, and in Getting StartED with Windows 7 we’ll highlight those features to make your time in Windows more productive and more pleasurable.

Inside, we examine the improved Windows interface, beginning with the new taskbar and Start menu for launching and organizing your applications, and the new ways you can organize and arrange your open application windows to help you work more efficiently. We’ll walk through how best to organize your files and folders, and how to quickly make your way around your computer. We’ll show you how you can set up User Accounts so you can keep your private information secure or restrict what other users can access, and we'll show you how you can change the look and feel of Windows so that each user can have the experience that suits them best.

We’ll look at how you can connect your computer to your home network so you can easily share documents and access printers, and we’ll examine ways you can connect and use other devices, such as music players or cameras. We'll also look at the applications that come with Windows, such as the new Internet Explorer 8 for surfing the Web quickly and securely, and the Windows Live Essentials pack that enables you to send e-mails, chat with friends and family, create documents, organize your photos, edit and share home movies, and much more.

• Introduces and explains all of the new features in Windows 7
• Shows how to get connected and get the most out of the software
• Tells you what to do when things go wrong

What you'll learn

• Navigate and customize the Windows 7 user interface
• Look after your computer and protect against dangerous software
• Control access to Windows, your applications, and the Internet
• Safeguard your personal files
• Connect to a network to share folders and media content
• Understand and fix problems

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Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server

Enhance your search with faceted navigation, result highlighting, fuzzy queries, ranked scoring, and more

• Deploy, embed, and integrate Solr with a host of programming languages
• Implement faceting in e-commerce and other sites to summarize and navigate the results of a text search
• Enhance your search by highlighting search results, offering spell-corrections, auto-suggest, finding "similar" records, boosting records and fields for scoring, phonetic matching
• Informative and practical approach to development with fully working examples of integrating a variety of technologies

In Detail If you are a developer building a high-traffic web site, you need to have a terrific search engine. Sites like Netflix.com and Zappos.com employ Solr, an open source enterprise search server, which uses and extends the Lucene search library. This is the first book in the market on Solr and it will show you how to optimize your web site for high volume web traffic with full-text search capabilities along with loads of customization options. So, let your users gain a terrific search experience.

This book is a comprehensive reference guide for every feature Solr has to offer. It serves the reader right from initiation to development to deployment. It also comes with complete running examples to demonstrate its use and show how to integrate it with other languages and frameworks.

This book first gives you a quick overview of Solr, and then gradually takes you from basic to advanced features that enhance your search. It starts off by discussing Solr and helping you understand how it fits into your architecture--where all databases and document/web crawlers fall short, and Solr shines. The main part of the book is a thorough exploration of nearly every feature that Solr offers. To keep this interesting and realistic, we use a large open source set of metadata about artists, releases, and tracks courtesy of the MusicBrainz.org project. Using this data as a testing ground for Solr, you will learn how to import this data in various ways from CSV to XML to database access. You will then learn how to search this data in a myriad of ways, including Solr's rich query syntax, "boosting" match scores based on record data and other means, about searching across multiple fields with different boosts, getting facets on the results, auto-complete user queries, spell-correcting searches, highlighting queried text in search results, and so on.

After this thorough tour, we'll demonstrate working examples of integrating a variety of technologies with Solr such as Java, JavaScript, Drupal, Ruby, XSLT, PHP, and Python.

Finally, we'll cover various deployment considerations to include indexing strategies and performance-oriented configuration that will enable you to scale Solr to meet the needs of a high-volume site.

What you will learn from this book?

• Blend structured data with real search features
• Import CSV formatted data, XML, common document formats, and from databases
• Deploy Solr and provide reference to Solr's query syntax from the basics to range queries
• Enhance search results with spell-checking, auto-completing queries, highlighting search results, and more.
• Secure Solr
• Integrate a host of technologies with Solr from the server side to client-side JavaScript, to frameworks like Drupal
• Scale Solr using replication, distributed searches, and tuning

Approach

The book takes a step-by-step tutorial approach with fully working examples in Java. It will show you how to implement a Solr-based search engine on your intranet or web site.

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My BlackBerry Curve

Step-by-step instructions with callouts to BlackBerry Curve photos that show you exactly what to do.

Help when you run into BlackBerry Curve problems or limitations.

Tips and Notes to help you get the most from your BlackBerry Curve.

Full-color, step-by-step tasks walk you through getting and keeping your BlackBerry Curve working just the way you want. The tasks include:

• How to get started fast with any BlackBerry Curve: 8300 Series, 8500 Series, or 8900 Series

• How to make, receive, and manage calls and emails efficiently

• How to use the BlackBerry Curve’s powerful contact management and calendar software

• How to listen to audio and watch video

• How to connect to the Internet, Bluetooth devices, and your company’s VPN

• How to browse the Web from your BlackBerry Curve

• How to use the BlackBerry Curve’s messaging tools, including text, multimedia, PIN, and IM

• How to find, choose, and install new BlackBerry Curve applications

• How to connect with social networking sites and tools

• How to use Airplane Mode to watch videos, read emails, and listen to music during flights

• How to keep your BlackBerry Curve up-to-date, reliable, and running at top performance

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ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed

In this book, world-renowned ASP.NET expert and member of the Microsoft ASP.NET team Stephen Walther shows experienced developers how to use Microsoft’s new ASP.NET MVC Framework to build web applications that are more powerful, flexible, testable, manageable, scalable, and extensible.

Writing for professional programmers, Walther explains the crucial concepts that make the Model-View-Controller (MVC) development paradigm work so well and shows exactly how to apply them with the ASP.NET MVC Framework. From controllers and actions to views and models, Walther demonstrates how to apply each ASP.NET MVC Framework feature in real-world projects.

In Part II, you’ll walk step-by-step through building a full-fledged ASP.NET MVC blog application that implements capabilities ranging from data access to validation. Through this case study, you’ll learn how to build ASP.NET MVC applications using test-driven development processes that enable rapid feedback, greater productivity, and better quality.

Throughout, Walther presents extensive code examples, reflecting his unsurpassed experience as an ASP.NET instructor, a leading commercial developer, and now as a member of Microsoft’s ASP.NET development team.

Understand how to:

• Build enterprise-scale web applications far more rapidly and effectively
• Develop web applications that are easier to maintain and extend over time
• Gain unprecedented control over the appearance of your website or application
• Expose intuitive URLs that are friendlier to search engines and users alike
• Create ASP.NET MVC models that contain all your application’s business, validation, and data access logic
• Make the most of HTML helpers, model binders, action filters, routing, and authentication
• Efficiently deploy your ASP.NET MVC applications
• Use the lightweight JQuery JavaScript library to easily find and manipulate HTML elements
• Create ASP.NET MVC applications using unit test and mock object framework

==> Download <==

Professional Enterprise .NET

Comprehensive coverage to help experienced .NET developers create flexible, extensible enterprise application code

If you're an experienced Microsoft .NET developer, you'll find in this book a road map to the latest enterprise development methodologies. It covers the tools you will use in addition to Visual Studio, including Spring.NET and nUnit, and applies to development with ASP.NET, C#, VB, Office (VBA), and database.

You will find comprehensive coverage of the tools and practices that professional .NET developers need to master in order to build enterprise more flexible, testable, and extensible .NET applications with minimal upfront costs.

• Helps C#, VB.Net, and ASP.NET developers who wish to migrate both their applications and their own skillsets to newer, more flexible enterprise methodologies
• Describes each new pattern or feature along with its benefits, then outlines the pros and cons of its implementation
• Includes an introduction to enterprise development and a comprehensive overview of the differences between new enterprise patterns and older, traditional Microsoft programming
• Explains how to implement these patterns by upgrading an existing code base
• Covers benefits including flexibility, automated testing, extensibility, and separation; modular code; test-driven development, unit test, test automation, and refactoring; inversion of control; and object relational mapping
• Also covers enterprise design patterns: MVC including Ruby on Rails, Monorail, and ASP.NET MVC, MVP, observer, and more
• Contains a primer on object-oriented design

Professional Enterprise .NET focuses on the often-inevitable compromise between forward-thinking design and the needs of business, helping you build applications that serve both.

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The Data Access Handbook: Achieving Optimal Database Application Performance and Scalability

Drive breakthrough database application performance by optimizing middleware and connectivity

Performance and scalability are more critical than ever in today’s enterprise database applications, and traditional database tuning isn’t nearly enough to solve the performance problems you are likely to see in those applications. Nowadays, 75-95% of the time it takes to process a data request is typically spent in the database middleware. Today’s worst performance and scalability problems are generally caused by issues with networking, database drivers, the broader software/hardware environment, and inefficient coding of data requests. In The Data Access Handbook, two of the world’s leading experts on database access systematically address these issues, showing how to achieve remarkable improvements in performance of real-world database applications.

Drawing on their unsurpassed experience with every leading database system and database connectivity API, John Goodson and Rob Steward reveal the powerful ways middleware affects application performance and guide developers with designing and writing API code that will deliver superior performance in each leading environment. In addition to covering essential concepts and techniques that apply across database systems and APIs, they present many API examples for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET as well as database system examples for DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase.

Coverage includes

• Clearly understanding how each component of database middleware can impact performance and scalability
• Writing database applications to reduce network traffic, limit disk I/O, optimize application-to-driver interaction, and simplify queries—including examples for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET
• Managing connections, transactions, and SQL statement execution more efficiently
• Making the most of connection and statement pooling
• Writing good benchmarks to predict your application’s performance
• Systematically resolving performance problems—including eight start-to-finish case-study examples

If you’re a software architect, system designer, or database application developer, The Data Access Handbook will be your most indispensable database application performance resource. It’s the one book that focuses on the areas where you can achieve the greatest improvements—whether you’re designing new database applications or troubleshooting existing ones.

John Goodson is vice president and general manager of the DataDirect division of Progress Software, a leader in
data connectivity and mainframe integration. For 20 years, he has worked with Sun, Microsoft, and others to develop database connectivity standards such as J2EE, JDBC, ODBC, and ADO. He served on the ANSI H2 committee that built the SQL standard and now participates in the JDBC Expert Group and Java Rowsets standards committees.

Rob Steward, vice president of R&D at the DataDirect
division of Progress Software,
is responsible for the development, strategy, and oversight of the company’s data connectivity products. Rob has spent the past 15 years developing high-performing database driver and data providers, including ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET.

Both authors have spoken on database application performance at many industry events.

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Successful Software Development (2nd Edition)

For courses in Software Engineering and Software Reliability. Successful Software Development takes a systematic approach to consistently successful software development. It proceeds from the fact that there is no one way to develop software systems and introduces a model for a mature software development process that accommodates flexibility, the Systems Engineering Environment (SEE). This model comprises two fundamental, interlocked elements: the policies and procedures that define how software development is performed and the technologies available to get the job done.

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Expert SQL Server 2008 Development

Expert SQL Server 2008 Development is aimed at SQL Server developers ready to move beyond Books Online. Author and experienced developer Alastair Aitchison shows you how to think about SQL Server development as if it were any other type of development. You’ll learn to manage testing in SQL Server and to properly deal with errors and exceptions. The book also covers critical, database-centric topics such as managing concurrency and securing your data and code through proper privileges and authorization.

Alastair places focus on sound development and architectural practices that will help you become a better developer, capable of designing high-performance, robust, maintainable database applications. He shows you how to apply notable features in SQL Server such as encryption and support for hierarchical data. If developing for SQL Server is what puts the bread on your table, you can do no better than to read this book and to assimilate the expert-level practices that it provides.

• Promotes expert-level practices
• Leads to high performance, scalable code
• Improves productivity, getting you home in time for dinner

What you’ll learn

• Productively handle errors and exceptions.
• Exploit features for managing spatial and temporal data.
• Manage tree-structured data using the new, hierarchid type.
• Write code that easily survives high concurrency.
• Program defensively.
• Create proper and reusable test environments for your code.
• Secure code and data through encryption and proper application of privilege.

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The Definitive Guide to Magento

This book takes a comprehensive look at Magento, a robust and flexible e-commerce platform built on the Zend framework. With over 750,000 downloads, Magento is the fastest growing open source e-commerce solution. This book walks you through all of the steps necessary to build a fully functional Magento-based web site. It also includes information on managing products, customers, and orders. This book is directed at web site designers and developers, but will also be extremely useful for business owners who have web sites built on the Magento platform.

• Introduces you to Magento, the fastest-growing open source e-commerce platform
• Demonstrates how to configure and use Magento
• Covers how to customize Magento and develop extensions for the Magento platform

What you’ll learn

• How to install and set up a Magento based e-commerce web site
• How to effectively manage products, customers, and orders
• How to sell products through Magento
• How to design a custom Magento web site
• How to add content to your Magento web site
• How to create your own Magento extensions

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Pro Android Games

Do you remember landmark games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Asteroids? Well, here’s an exciting opportunity to build and/or port these games to one of the hottest mobile and netbooks platforms today: Google’s Android.

Pro Android Games teaches you how to build cool games like Space Blaster and the classic Asteroids from scratch on the latest Android platform. This book also shows you how to port other classic freeware/shareware games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D from C using the Java Native Interface (JNI) for Android.

This book is all about a unique perspective in Android game development: a well-balanced, powerful combination of pure Java and hybrid game development, mixing Java and C. By combining the elegant object-oriented features of Java and the raw power of C, there is no limit to the types of games that you can build for the platform. With actionable real-world source code in hand, this book allows you to dive right into games development on Android. You’ll definitely have fun, and perhaps you’ll even make some money. Enjoy!

What you’ll learn

• How to write/port advanced 3D games for any Android device.
• How to setup a Linux system for hybrid game compilation.
• How to combine Java and C code in an elegant manner by building a simple Java application on top of a native library.
• How to tackle pure Java gaming with two practical games: Space Blaster and the arcade classic Asteroids.
• How to mix OpenGL API calls in Java and C for high performance 3D graphics using the 3D cubes sample by Google.
• How to bring two of the greatest PC 3D shooters to the Android platform: Wolfenstein 3D and Doom using Java and C.

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Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware

Create your own Arduino-based designs, gain in-depth knowledge of the architecture of Arduino, and learn the user-friendly Arduino language all in the context of practical projects that you can build yourself at home. Get hands-on experience using a variety of projects and recipes for everything from home automation to test equipment.

Arduino has taken off as an incredibly popular building block among ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) enthusiasts, robotics hobbyists, and DIY home automation developers. Authors Jonathan Oxer and Hugh Blemings provide detailed instructions for building a wide range of both practical and fun Arduino-related projects, covering areas such as hobbies, automotive, communications, home automation, and instrumentation.

• Take Arduino beyond "blink" to a wide variety of projects from simple to challenging
• Hands-on recipes for everything from home automation to interfacing with your car engine management system
• Explanations of techniques and references to handy resources for ubiquitous computing projects

Supplementary material includes a circuit schematic reference, introductions to a range of electronic engineering principles and general hints & tips. These combine with the projects themselves to make Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware an invaluable reference for Arduino users of all levels. You'll learn a wide variety of techniques that can be applied to your own projects.

What you'll learn

• Communication with serial devices including RFID readers, temperature sensors, and GPS modules
• Connecting Arduino to Ethernet and WiFi networks
• Adding synthesized speech to Arduino
• Linking Arduino to web services
• Decoding data streams from commercial wireless devices
• How to make DIY prototyping shields for only a couple of dollars

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More iPhone 3 Development: Tackling iPhone SDK 3

Interested in iPhone development? Want to learn more? Whether you’re a self-taught iPhone development genius or have just made your way through the pages of Beginning iPhone 3 Development, we have the perfect book for you.

More iPhone 3 Development: Tackling iPhone SDK 3 digs deeper into Apple’s latest SDK. Best-selling authors Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche explain concepts as only they can, covering topics like Core Data, peer-to-peer networking using GameKit and network streams, working with data from the web, MapKit, in-application e-mail, and more. All the concepts and APIs are clearly presented with code snippets you can customize and use, as you like, in your own apps.

If you are going to write a professional iPhone app, you’ll want to get your arms around Core Data, and there’s no better place to do so than in the pages of this book. The book continues right where Beginning iPhone 3 Development left off with a series of chapters devoted to Core Data, the standard for persistence that Apple introduced to iPhone with SDK 3. Jeff and Dave carefully step through each of the Core Data concepts and show you techniques and tips specifically for writing larger applications—offering a breadth of coverage you won't find anywhere else.

The Core Data coverage alone is worth the price of admission. But there's so much more. This book covers a variety of networking mechanisms, from GameKit’s relatively simple BlueTooth peer-to-peer model, to the addition of Bonjour discovery and network streams, through the complexity of accessing files via the web. Dave and Jeff will also take you through coverage of concurrent programming and some advanced techniques for debugging your applications.

Whether you are a relative newcomer to iPhone development or an old hand looking to expand your horizons, there’s something for everyone in More iPhone 3 Development.

Note: A few of the apps in this book demonstrate technologies not yet supported by the simulator. To run them on your iPhone or iPod touch, you'll need to join one of Apple's paid iPhone developer programs.

What you’ll learn

• All about Core Data: key concepts and techniques for writing larger application
• How to utilize a variety of networking mechanisms, including peer-to-peer connections over Bluetooth using GameKit
• Details on the addition of Bonjour discovery and network streams
• How to embed maps with Map Kit and use in-application email
• How to access a user's iPod library and integrate music into applications
• Essentials of concurrent programming and advanced debugging techniques
• Tips on working with data from the web

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Microsoft Windows 7 Your Way: Speed Up and Customize Windows

Want to make Windows 7 run faster, smarter, easier, better? Want to personalize Windows to look and act the way you want it to? Want to get
more efficient and ditch all those Windows hassles? You don’t need
a Ph.D in computer science or expensive upgrades. All you need is this book!

Michael Miller makes it easy to tweak Windows so it works just like you
want it to–and runs smooth as silk for years to come. No extreme hacking required: These are simple, step-by-step techniques anyone can perform in minutes–even beginners!

• Customize Windows 7’s desktop for the way you work

• Strip out bloated, worthless software that slows your PC down

• Get your network running faster and more reliably

• Surf the Web more quickly and safely

• Improve performance and battery life on notebooks and netbooks

• Get more security with fewer annoyances

• Discover great free and cheap alternatives to Microsoft’s built-in software

• Fix Windows 7’s most aggravating problems

• And much more...

Michael Miller has written more than 100 non-fiction how-to books over the past 20 years, including Que’s Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Computer Basics, Speed It Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers, and How Microsoft Windows Vista Works. His books have sold more than 1 million copies worldwide. He has earned a reputation for clearly explaining technical topics to non-technical readers and for offering useful real-world advice about complex topics.

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Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.6: A Guide to Supporting and Troubleshooting

The only Apple-certified book on Mac OS X v10.6, this revised best-seller will take you deep inside the latest big-cat operating system—covering everything from installation to automation, customizing the operating system, supporting applications, setting up peripherals, and more. Whether you're a support technician or simply an ardent Mac user, you'll quickly learn and master the new features in Mac OS X 10.6, including native support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Following the learning objectives of the Apple Certified Support Professional exam, this self-paced book is a perfect guide for Apple’s training and a first-rate primer for computer support personnel who need to troubleshoot and optimize Mac OS X as part of their jobs. Chapter review sections and quizzes summarize and reinforce acquired knowledge.

The Apple Training Series serves as both a self-paced learning tool and the official curriculum for the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server certification programs.

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Moodle 1.9 Math

Integrate interactive math presentations, build feature-rich quizzes, set online assignments, incorporate Flash games, and monitor student progress using the Moodle e-learning platform

• Get to grips with converting your mathematics teaching over to Moodle
• Engage and motivate your students with exciting, interactive, and engaging online math courses with Moodle, which include mathematical notation, graphs, images, video, audio, and more
• Integrate multimedia elements in math courses to make learning math interactive and fun
• Inspiring, realistic examples and interactive assessment exercises to give you ideas for your own Moodle math courses

In Detail

Moodle is a popular e-learning platform that is making inroads into all areas of the curriculum. Using moodle helps you to develop exciting, interactive, and engaging online math courses. But teaching math requires use of graphs, equations, special notation, and other features that are not built into Moodle. Using Moodle to teach Mathematics presents its own challenges.

The book will show you how to set-up a Moodle course to support the teaching of mathematics. It will also help you to carefully explore the Moodle plugins that allow the handling of equations and enable other frequently used mathematical activities.

Taking a practical approach, this book will introduce you to the concepts of converting mathematics teaching over to Moodle. It provides you with everything you need to include mathematical notation, graphs, images, video, audio, and more in your Moodle courses. By following the practical examples in this book, you can create feature-rich quizzes that are automatically marked, use tools to monitor student progress, employ modules and plugins allowing students to explore mathematical concepts. You'll also learn the integration of presentations, interactive math elements, SCORM, and Flash objects into Moodle. It will take you through these elements in detail and help you learn how to create, edit, and integrate them into Moodle.

Soon you will develop your own exciting, interactive, and engaging online math courses with ease.

What you will learn from this book?

• Convert mathematics teaching over to Moodle
• Enhance your course with interactive graphs, images, videos, and audio
• Integrate interactive presentations and explore different ways to include them in your course
• Create your own SCORM activities using both free and commercial tools
• Add rich animation and fun games by incorporating Flash games and activities for engaging your students
• Build feature-rich quizzes and set online assignments
• Monitor student progress and assess your teaching success
• Configure Moodle to display the complete set of mathematical symbols and objects

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