You d be up to your neck in normal forms before you even had a chance to wade. When Michael J. Hernandez needed a database design book to teach mere mortals like himself, there were none. So he began a personal quest to learn enough to write one. And he did.Now in its Second Edition, Database Design for Mere Mortals is a miracle for today s generation of database users who don t have the background -- or the time -- to learn database design the hard way. It s also a secret pleasure for working pros who are occasionally still trying to figure out what they were taught.Drawing on 13 years of database teaching experience, Hernandez has organized database design into several key principles that are surprisingly easy to understand and remember. He illuminates those principles using examples that are generic enough to help you with virtually any application.Hernandez s goals are simple. You ll learn how to create a sound database structure as easily as possible. You ll learn how to optimize your structure for efficiency and data integrity. You ll learn how to avoid problems like missing, incorrect, mismatched, or inaccurate data. You ll learn how to relate tables together to make it possible to get whatever answers you need in the future -- even if you haven t thought of the questions yet.If -- as is often the case -- you already have a database, Hernandez explains how to analyze it -- and leverage it. You ll learn how to identify new information requirements, determine new business rules that need to be applied, and apply them.Hernandez starts with an introduction to databases, relational databases, and the idea and objectives of database design. Next, you ll walk through the key elements of the database design process: establishing table structures and relationships, assigning primary keys, setting field specifications, and setting up views. Hernandez s extensive coverage of data integrity includes a full chapter on establishing business rules and using validation tables.Hernandez surveys bad design techniques in a chapter on what not to do -- and finally, helps you identify those rare instances when it makes sense to bend or even break the conventional rules of database design.There s plenty that s new in this edition. Hernandez has gone over his text and illustrations with a fine-tooth comb to improve their already impressive clarity. You ll find updates to reflect new advances in technology, including web database applications. There are expanded and improved discussions of nulls and many-to-many relationships; multivalued fields; primary keys; and SQL data type fields. There s a new Quick Reference database design flowchart. A new glossary. New review questions at the end of every chapter.Finally, it s worth mentioning what this book isn t. It isn t a guide to any specific database platform -- so you can use it whether you re running Access, SQL Server, or Oracle, MySQL or PostgreSQL. And it isn t an SQL guide. (If that s what you need, Michael J. Hernandez has also coauthored the superb SQL Queries for Mere Mortals). But if database design is what you need to learn, this book s worth its weight in gold. Bill CamardaBill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

    Currently, Lua is being used in areas ranging from embedded systems to Web development and is widely spread in the game industry, where knowledge of Lua is an indisputable asset. "Programming in Lua" is the official book about the language, giving a solid base for any programmer who wants to use Lua. Authored by Roberto Ierusalimschy, the chief architect of the language, it covers all aspects of Lua 5---from the basics to its API with C---explaining how to make good use of its features and giving numerous code examples. "Programming in Lua" is targeted at people with some programming background, but does not assume any prior knowledge about Lua or other scripting languages. This Second Edition updates the text to Lua 5.1 and brings substantial new material, including numerous new examples, a detailed explanation of the new module system, and two new chapters centered on multiple states and garbage collection.

    It starts with core concepts like sending, receiving, routing, and transforming data and then shows readers the entire lifecycle. The book goes in depth on how to test, deal with errors, scale, deploy, and monitor apps and even how to build custom tooling. Written by core developers of Camel and the authors of the first edition, this book distills their experience and practical insights so that readers can tackle integration tasks like a pro.Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

    In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.

    More than any other language, Python was created with the philosophy of simplicity and parsimony. Now 25 years old, Python has become the primary or secondary language (after SQL) for many business users. With popularity comes diversity--and possibly dilution.This guide, collaboratively written by over a hundred members of the Python community, describes best practices currently used by package and application developers. Unlike other books for this audience, The Hitchhiker's Guide is light on reusable code and heavier on design philosophy, directing the reader to excellent sources that already exist.

    How can you work with it efficiently? Recently updated for Spark 1.3, this book introduces Apache Spark, the open source cluster computing system that makes data analytics fast to write and fast to run. With Spark, you can tackle big datasets quickly through simple APIs in Python, Java, and Scala. This edition includes new information on Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, setup, and Maven coordinates. Written by the developers of Spark, this book will have data scientists and engineers up and running in no time. You’ll learn how to express parallel jobs with just a few lines of code, and cover applications from simple batch jobs to stream processing and machine learning. Quickly dive into Spark capabilities such as distributed datasets, in-memory caching, and the interactive shell Leverage Spark’s powerful built-in libraries, including Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, and MLlib Use one programming paradigm instead of mixing and matching tools like Hive, Hadoop, Mahout, and Storm Learn how to deploy interactive, batch, and streaming applications Connect to data sources including HDFS, Hive, JSON, and S3 Master advanced topics like data partitioning and shared variables

    Generics and the greatly expanded collection libraries have tremendously increased the power of Java 5 and Java 6. But they have also confused many developers who haven't known how to take advantage of these new features.Java Generics and Collections covers everything from the most basic uses of generics to the strangest corner cases. It teaches you everything you need to know about the collections libraries, so you'll always know which collection is appropriate for any given task, and how to use it.Topics covered include:• Fundamentals of generics: type parameters and generic methods• Other new features: boxing and unboxing, foreach loops, varargs• Subtyping and wildcards• Evolution not revolution: generic libraries with legacy clients and generic clients with legacy libraries• Generics and reflection• Design patterns for generics• Sets, Queues, Lists, Maps, and their implementations• Concurrent programming and thread safety with collections• Performance implications of different collectionsGenerics and the new collection libraries they inspired take Java to a new level. If you want to take your software development practice to a new level, this book is essential reading.Philip Wadler is Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, where his research focuses on the design of programming languages. He is a co-designer of GJ, work that became the basis for generics in Sun's Java 5.0.Maurice Naftalin is Technical Director at Morningside Light Ltd., a software consultancy in the United Kingdom. He has most recently served as an architect and mentor at NSB Retail Systems plc, and as the leader of the client development team of a major UK government social service system."A brilliant exposition of generics. By far the best book on the topic, it provides a crystal clear tutorial that starts with the basics and ends leaving the reader with a deep understanding of both the use and design of generics." Gilad Bracha, Java Generics Lead, Sun Microsystems

    Every page of Linux Pocket Guide lives up to this billing. It clearly explains how to get up to speed quickly on day-to-day Linux use. Once you're up and running, Linux Pocket Guide provides an easy-to-use reference that you can keep by your keyboard for those times when you want a fast, useful answer, not hours in the man pages.Linux Pocket Guide is organized the way you use Linux: by function, not just alphabetically. It's not the 'bible of Linux; it's a practical and concise guide to the options and commands you need most. It starts with general concepts like files and directories, the shell, and X windows, and then presents detailed overviews of the most essential commands, with clear examples. You'll learn each command's purpose, usage, options, location on disk, and even the RPM package that installed it.The Linux Pocket Guide is tailored to Fedora Linux--the latest spin-off of Red Hat Linux--but most of the information applies to any Linux system.Throw in a host of valuable power user tips and a friendly and accessible style, and you'll quickly find this practical, to-the-point book a small but mighty resource for Linux users.

    It brings together all the knowledge needed to write any program, use any standard or third-party Python 3 library, and create new library modules of your own.

    Widely accepted as the authoritative text and reference on electronic circuit design, both analog and digital, this book revolutionized the teaching of electronics by emphasizing the methods actually used by circuit designers -- a combination of some basic laws, rules of thumb, and a large bag of tricks. The result is a largely nonmathematical treatment that encourages circuit intuition, brainstorming, and simplified calculations of circuit values and performance. The new Art of Electronics retains the feeling of informality and easy access that helped make the first edition so successful and popular. It is an ideal first textbook on electronics for scientists and engineers and an indispensable reference for anyone, professional or amateur, who works with electronic circuits.

    It provides students with skills that will enable them to make productive use of computational techniques, including some of the tools and techniques of "data science" for using computation to model and interpret data. The book is based on an MIT course (which became the most popular course offered through MIT's OpenCourseWare) and was developed for use not only in a conventional classroom but in in a massive open online course (or MOOC) offered by the pioneering MIT--Harvard collaboration edX.Students are introduced to Python and the basics of programming in the context of such computational concepts and techniques as exhaustive enumeration, bisection search, and efficient approximation algorithms. The book does not require knowledge of mathematics beyond high school algebra, but does assume that readers are comfortable with rigorous thinking and not intimidated by mathematical concepts. Although it covers such traditional topics as computational complexity and simple algorithms, the book focuses on a wide range of topics not found in most introductory texts, including information visualization, simulations to model randomness, computational techniques to understand data, and statistical techniques that inform (and misinform) as well as two related but relatively advanced topics: optimization problems and dynamic programming.Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python can serve as a stepping-stone to more advanced computer science courses, or as a basic grounding in computational problem solving for students in other disciplines.

    At under 200 pages it's quick reading too. Makes a great airplane book.

    Written in a frank but engaging style, Debuggingprovides simple, foolproof principles guaranteed to help find any bug quickly. This book makes those shelves of application-specific debugging books (on C++, Perl, Java, etc.) obsolete. It changes the way readers think about debugging, making those pesky problems suddenly much easier to find and fix. Illustrating the rules with real-life bug-detection war stories, the book shows readers how to: * Understand the system: how perceiving the ""roadmap"" can hasten your journey * Quit thinking and look: when hands-on investigation can’t be avoided * Isolate critical factors: why changing one element at a time can be an essential tool * Keep an audit trail: how keeping a record of the debugging process can win the day

    Updated to cover Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's vastly improved browser, this new edition includes content on positioning, lists and generated content, table layout, user interface, paged media, and more.Simply put, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a way to separate a document's structure from its presentation. The benefits of this can be quite profound: CSS allows a much richer document appearance than HTML and also saves time -- you can create or change the appearance of an entire document in just one place; and its compact file size makes web pages load quickly.CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition, provides you with a comprehensive guide to CSS implementation, along with a thorough review of all aspects of CSS 2.1. Updated to cover Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's vastly improved browser, this new edition includes content on positioning, lists and generated content, table layout, user interface, paged media, and more. Author Eric Meyer tackles the subject with passion, exploring in detail each individual CSS property and how it interacts with other properties. You'll not only learn how to avoid common mistakes in interpretation, you also will benefit from the depth and breadth of his experience and his clear and honest style. This is the complete sourcebook on CSS.The 3rd edition contains:Updates to reflect changes in the latest draft version of CSS 2.1Browser notes updated to reflect changes between IE6 and IE7Advanced selectors supported in IE7 and other major browsers includedA new round of technical edits by a fresh set of editorsClarifications and corrected errata, including updated URLs ofreferenced online resources

    By reconstructing authentic, complex AI programs using state-of-the-art Common Lisp, the book teaches students and professionals how to build and debug robust practical programs, while demonstrating superior programming style and important AI concepts. The author strongly emphasizes the practical performance issues involved in writing real working programs of significant size. Chapters on troubleshooting and efficiency are included, along with a discussion of the fundamentals of object-oriented programming and a description of the main CLOS functions. This volume is an excellent text for a course on AI programming, a useful supplement for general AI courses and an indispensable reference for the professional programmer.