Wordtrade LogoWordtrade.com
Technology

 

Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences

 

Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2003 R2 by Brad Price, John A. Price, Scott Fenstermacher (Sybex) Active Directory stores information about a network's users and directories, making it easier to configure, manage, and update a network

  • Windows Server 2003 R2 will include a new scripting engine to make Active Directory administration quicker and easier, plus a Group Policy Management Console for managing group and user accounts

  • Geared to experienced system administrators, this book focuses on serious day-to-day needs and provides real-world solutions, including scripts that can be downloaded and implemented in any AD system

  • In-Depth Coverage for High-Level Active Directory Administrators

  • If you're an Active Directory systems administrator, this

  • comprehensive guide to the Windows Server 2003 R2 version of Active Directory offers you targeted solutions for the day-to-day requirements of managing a system. From improving your

  • efficiency with ready-to-use scripts that can be downloaded

  • from Sybex's web site, to a full range of automation solutions for managing the accounts of users and groups, this book delves into detail at the advanced level you need.

  • Practical and immediate, Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2003 R2 provides serious instruction for serious users, but also includes a refresher of the basics—a valuable resource you'll turn to again and again.

Coverage includes

  • Understanding schema, the building blocks of Active Directory

  • Organizing the physical and logical aspects of Active Directory

  • Finding out what's new in R2 that enhances Active Directory

  • Examining Microsoft's latest UNIX integration in R2

  • Designing a rock solid Active Directory infrastructure

  • Employing the new R2 scripting engine

  • Managing groups, users, and computers

  • Setting boundaries on policies, sites, and access

  • Analyzing and prioritizing risk

  • Troubleshooting at the highest level

  • All the ready-to-use scripts are available for download from the book's product page on www.sybex.com.

  • Leverage Real-World Solutions for Automating Management Tasks

  • Increase your Productivity with Five Full Chapters on Troubleshooting

  • Take Advantage of Ready-to-Use Scripts

Mastering  Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 by John Paul Mueller (Sybex) Powerful Web Development Technologies, Now Made Simple For anyone who wants to build a professional website with minimal trouble, Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition is the solution. This book makes it even easier. Whether you're a true beginner or an experienced web developer who hasn't yet worked with .NET, you'll learn how to leverage today's most powerful web development technologies without getting bogged down in details. This is also a great first step for anyone who plans to move on to Microsoft Visual Studio. Coverage Includes * Using master pages to accommodate repeated content * Inserting navigational aids that reduce user frustration * Using themes to minimize hand-coding * Adding search features to your website * Building a shopping cart application for your website * Creating a flexible user environment using Webpart technology * Using scripts to perform tasks more quickly * Creating intelligent web pages with SmartTags * Including sound and video in your web pages * Making the move from Visual Web Developer Express to Visual Studio 2005 * Using automation whenever possible * Making your web pages more accessible Featured on the CD The CD contains the release of Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. Keep Development Simple by Combining .NET with Other Technologies Store XML Data in a Text File for Lower Costs, Easier Connectivity, and Better Performance Master Every Technique by Following the Thorough Step-by-Step Instructions and Real-World Examples

Powerful Web Development Technologies, Now Made Simple

For anyone who wants to build a professional website with minimal trouble, Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition is the solution. This book makes it even easier. Whether you're a true beginner or an experienced web developer who hasn't yet worked with .NET, you'll learn how to leverage today's most powerful web development technologies without getting bogged down in details. This is also a great first step for anyone who plans to move on to Microsoft Visual Studio.

Coverage Includes

  • Using master pages to accommodate repeated content

  • Inserting navigational aids that reduce user frustration

  • Using themes to minimize hand-coding

  • Adding search features to your website

  • Building a shopping cart application for your website

  • Creating a flexible user environment using Webpart technology

  • Using scripts to perform tasks more quickly

  • Creating intelligent web pages with SmartTags

  • Including sound and video in your web pages

  • Making the move from Visual Web Developer Express to Visual Studio 2005

  • Using automation whenever possible

  • Making your web pages more accessible

  • Featured on the CD

  • The CD contains the release of Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.

  • Keep Development Simple by Combining .NET with Other Technologies

  • Store XML Data in a Text File for Lower Costs, Easier Connectivity, and Better Performance

  • Master Every Technique by Following the Thorough Step-by-Step Instructions and Real-World Examples

Developing Intelligent Agent Systems: A Practical Guide by Lin Padgham, Michael Winikoff (Wiley Series in Agent Technology: John Wiley & Sons) Intelligent agent technology is a tool of modern computer science that can be used to engineer complex computer programmes that behave rationally in dynamic and changing environments. Applications range from small programmes that intelligently search the Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, to autonomous space probes.

This powerful technology is not widely used, however, as developing intelligent agent software requires high levels of training and skill. The authors of this book have developed and tested a methodology and tools for developing intelligent agent systems. With this methodology (Prometheus) developers can start agent-oriented designs and implementations easily from scratch saving valuable time and resources.

Developing Intelligent Agent Systems not only answers the questions "what are agents?" and "why are they useful?" but also the crucial question: "how do I design and build intelligent agent systems?" The book covers everything a practitioner needs to know to begin to effectively use this technology - including an introduction to the notion of agents, a description of the concepts involved, and a software engineering methodology.

Read on for:

  • a practical step-by-step introduction to designing and building intelligent agent systems.

  • a full life-cycle methodology for developing intelligent agent systems covering specification, analysis, design and implementation of agents.

  • PDT: Prometheus Design Tool – software support for the Prometheus design process.

  • the example of an electronic bookstore to illustrate the design process throughout the book.

Electronic resources including the Prometheus Design Tool (PDT), can be found at: www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/prometheus 

This book is aimed at industrial software developers, software engineers and at advanced undergraduate students. It assumes knowledge of basic software engineering but does not require knowledge of Artificial Intelligence or of mathematics. Familiarity with Java will help in reading the examples in chapter 10.


Excerpt: Intelligent software agents' are a powerful technology that is attracting considerable (and growing!) interest.

While there are books that cover research areas on agents or survey the field, there is no book that is aimed at an industrial software developer that answers not only the questions `what are agents?' and `why are they useful?' but also the crucial question `how do I design and build intelligent software agents?'.

Our book aims to provide a practical introduction to building intelligent agent systems. It covers everything a practitioner needs to know to build multi-agent systems of intelligent agents. It includes an introduction to the notion of agents, a description of the concepts involved, and a software engineering methodology covering specification, analysis, design and implementation of agent systems.

The core of the book is the Prometheus methodology for designing multi-agent sys­tems. The methodology was developed over the past six or seven years in collaboration with Agent Oriented Software, a company that markets the agent development platform, JACKTM as well as agent solutions. The methodology has been used internally at Agent Oriented Software and has also been taught at industry workshops and within university courses. It has proven effective in assisting students and practitioners to develop and document their design and is now at a sufficient level of maturity that support tools have been developed.

Our goal in developing Prometheus was to have a process with associated deliverables that could be taught to industry practitioners and undergraduate students who do not have a background in agents and which they could then use to develop intelligent agent systems. Our evidence that we have achieved this is, at this stage, still anecdotal; however, the indications are that Prometheus is usable by nonexperts and that they find it useful.

We do not believe that Prometheus is complete and perfect, nor that it is a perfect fit as-is for all applications and all users. However, we do believe that it is usable and in our experience it is much better than not haying a methodology. Like most methodologies, Prometheus is intended to be interpreted as a set of guidelines and you should use your common sense and take what is useful, adapting the methodology as needed to suit your needs.

Although we do not believe that Prometheus is perfect, it is general purpose in the sense of not being specific to BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) agents. Only the later part of the detailed design phase (Chapter 9) makes assumptions about particular types of agent platforms. The assumptions made are fairly general and correspond to a class of agent platforms that have hierarchical plans with triggers, and a description for each plan that indicates the context in- which it is applicable.

This book is aimed at industrial software developers and at undergraduate students. It assumes knowledge of basic software engineering but does not require knowledge of Artificial Intelligence or of mathematics. Familiarity with Java will help in reading the examples in Chapter 10.

An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design by Joyce Farrell (Course Technology) This introductory text takes a language-independent, object-oriented approach to programming logic, the solid foundation needed to build 21st-century business applications and successful Web sites.

An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design provides the beginning programmer with a guide to devel­oping object-oriented program logic. This textbook assumes no programming language experience. The writing is non-technical and emphasizes good programming practices. The examples are business examples; they do not assume mathematical background beyond high school business math. Additionally, the examples illustrate one or two major points; they do not contain so many features that students become lost following irrelevant and extraneous details.

The examples in An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design have been created to provide students with a sound background in logic no matter what programming languages they eventually use to write programs. This book can be used in a standalone logic course that students take as a prerequisite to a programming course, or as a companion book to any object-oriented programming language text using any language such as Java, C++, or C#.

An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design introduces students to programming concepts, enforc­ing good style, and logical thinking. General programming concepts are introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 discusses the key concepts of object-orientation, including classes, objects, behaviors, and attributes. Chapter 3 extends the information on structured programming to the area of data hiding, particularly how to create methods and pass parameters to them and how public methods are used to access the private data of class objects. In Chapter 4, students are introduced to the advantages of structured programming, creating methods that include sequence, selection, and loop structures. Chapters 5 and 6 further explore the intricacies of decision-making and looping. Students learn to develop sophisticated programs that use arrays in Chapters 7 and 8.

The later chapters in the book provide the student with a background in a wide variety of programming techniques used in modern object-oriented applications. Chapter 9 describes programming with graphical user interface (GUI) objects and handling the events they generate. Chapter 10 teaches the basics of system design, introducing the Unified Modeling Language, Chapter 11 provides background in the object-oriented concepts of inheritance and polymorphism, and Chapter 12 describes managing program errors using the object-oriented technique called exception handling.

In addition to the 12 chapters, three appendices allow students to gain extra experience with structuring large unstruc­tured programs, using the binary numbering system, and working with large decision tables.

An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design combines text explanation with flowcharts and pseudocode examples to provide students with alternative means of expressing structured logic. Numerous detailed, full-program exercises at the end of each chapter illustrate the concepts explained within the chapter, and reinforce under-standing and retention of the material presented.

An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design is a language-independent introduction to programming logic beginning with object-oriented principles. It distinguishes itself from other programming logic texts in the following ways:

Objects are covered first so that students who intend to write programs in object-oriented pro­gramming languages do not learn procedural logic first, and then unlearn it to write in an object-oriented fashion. Instructors whose students will begin their programming careers using Java, Visual Basic, C++, or C# will appreciate this approach.

Object-oriented programming terminology is explained in easy-to-understand language, using every-day real-life examples as well as programming examples. Object-oriented concepts such as static and instance methods, and private and public access methods are learned before being burdened with the syntax of a specific language.

Object-oriented terminology is explained as it refers to GUI objects used in visual languages as well as to business objects.

No programming experience is assumed.

Examples are language-independent. This book can be used alone in a logic course or as a com­panion text in courses in any object-oriented programming language such as Java, Visual Basic, C++, or C#.

Examples are everyday business examples; no mathematics beyond high school algebra is required. This is not a computer science text; it is an introduction to logic for CIS students who want to get up to speed quickly developing useful programs.

Examples are simple; the point under discussion is not lost in examples with too much detail.

The student will understand data types and gain a solid foundation in the declaration, definition, and use of variables, arithmetic operations, and other basic programming concepts. Within methods, structure is stressed; students will become proficient in recognizing and using sequences, selections, loops, and arrays.

An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design is a superior textbook because it includes the following features:

Objectives: Each chapter begins with a list of objectives so the student knows the topics that will be presented in the chapter. In addition to providing a quick reference to topics covered, this fea­ture provides a useful study aid.

Flowcharts and pseudocode: This book has plenty of figures and illustrations, including flowcharts that provide the reader with a visual learning experience, rather than one that involves simply studying text.

Complete class example: Provides a complete class example in most chapters to demonstrate the application of the topics learned.

Tips: These notes provide additional information—for example, another location in the book that expands on a topic, or a common error to avoid.

Chapter summaries: A summary recaps the programming concepts and techniques covered in the chapter. This feature provides a concise means for students to review and check their under-standing of the main points in each chapter.

Key terms: A collection of all the key terms ends each chapter. Definitions are also included in sen­tence format and in the order in which they appear in the chapter.

Review questions: Twenty review questions at the end of each chapter reinforce the main ideas introduced in the chapter. Successfully answering these questions will demonstrate mastery of the concepts and information presented.

Exercises: Each chapter includes meaningful programming exercises that provide students with additional practice of the skills and concepts they learned in the lesson. These exercises increase in difficulty and are designed to allow students to explore logical programming concepts. Each exercise can be completed using flowcharts or pseudocode; in addition, instructors can choose to assign the exercises as programming problems to be coded and executed in an object-oriented programming language.

Case project: Each chapter concludes with a running case project involving a hypothetical business. By applying the current chapter's concepts to the continuing business example, the stu­dent discovers that the concepts learned in each chapter contributes to the development of a complete business system.

Headline 3

insert content here