Debra Dalgleish, Microsoft Office Excel MVP since 2001, and an expert and trainer in Excel, brings together a one-stop resource for anyone curious about representing, analyzing, and using their data with PivotTables and PivotCharts. You’ll find this book inimitable when facing any new or difficult problem in PivotTables, covering the entire breadth of situations you could ever encounter, from planning and creating, to formatting and extracting data, to maximizing performance and troubleshooting.

The author presents tips and techniques in this collection of recipes that can’t be found in Excel’s Help section, while carefully explaining the most confusing features of PivotTables to help you realize their powerful potential.

The chapters in this book have been organized into a collection of recipes to take you step by step from the problem you are experiencing to the solution you are aiming for. Without fuss, you’ll find clear and precise information to help you assess your situation, whether common or unique, and solve your problem. Working examples of complex PivotTables and numerous PivotTable programming examples will help you solve problems quickly, without the need to digest heavy content.

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This book for developers familiar with Ruby on Rails who want to develop and roll out small applications deals with a key feature or functional area of a complex, full-scale Rails application in each chapter, from installing Ruby, Rubygems, and Rails on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X and setting up a Subversion repository, to improving user interfaces with Ajax, deploying with Capistrano, and scaling through caching and the Mongrel server. Shortened to Rails or RoR, Ruby on Rails is an open-source web application framework ideal for building business applications, accelerating and simplifying the creation of database-driven websites with tools to rapidly build MVC web applications, providing easy rollout and update of applications, centralized processing and data handling, simple maintenance, straightforward development, and scalability. All businesses have small processes that can be automated to reduce costs and simplify everyday operations using intranet applications built on Rails. (more…)

Competent system administrators know their success hinges upon being able to perform often tedious tasks with rigor and punctuality. Such metrics are often achieved only by instituting a considerable degree of automation, something that has become even more crucial as IT environments continue to scale both in terms of size and complexity. One of the most powerful system administration tools to be released is Puppet, a solution capable of automating nearly every aspect of a system administrator’s job, from user management, to software installation, to even configuring server services such as FTP and LDAP.

Pulling Strings with Puppet: Configuration Management Made Easy is the first book to introduce the powerful Puppet system administration tool. Author James Turnbull will guide you through Puppet’s key features, showing you how to install and configure the software, create automated Puppet tasks, known as recipes, and even create reporting solutions and extend Puppet further to your own needs. A bonus chapter is included covering the Facter library, which makes it a breeze to automate the retrieval of server configuration details such as IP and MAC addresses.

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Discover how JRuby on Rails can be used to create web applications faster and more efficiently while still taking advantage of the vast power of the Java platform.

Ruby on Rails is proving itself to be one of the most efficient and powerful agile web development application frameworks available and has had a profound influence on the Java community. The JRuby project offers Java developers the best of two worlds: the flexibility of Ruby on Rails coupled with the enterprise-level power and maturity of the Java platform.

JRuby core developer Ola Bini covers everything you need to know to take full advantage of what JRuby has to offer, including

• Full coverage on how to use JRuby to create web applications faster and more efficiently, while continuing to take advantage of the vast power of the Java platform
• Several real-world projects that illustrate the crucial specifics you need to know about the interaction of Java and Ruby
• Helpful, practical instruction and discussion on how web applications can be deployed using a variety of popular servers such as Apache and Mongrel

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The unique, visual format of Illustrated C# 2008 has been specially created by author, and teacher of development methods, Daniel Solis. The concise text, use of tables to clarify language features, frequent figures and diagrams, as well as focused code samples all combine to create a unique approach that will help you understand and get to work with C# fast.

It was while teaching numerous seminars on various programming languages that the author realized the immense power diagrams have in explaining programming language concepts. Most people learn quicker and retain information better when the material is presented in a clean, simple, visual format. To achieve this result in his book, Solis uses concise text and bulleted lists, tables to clarify and summarize language features, as well as his renowned, ubiquitous figures and diagrams. Each language feature is illustrated with a concise and focused code sample for complete clarity.

Following an overview of the .NET platform and the role played by C#, you’ll soon move into exploring the C# language in its entirety, including all the new C# 2008 features right down to the most complex topics involved in C#. If you’re a C++ or VB programmer migrating to C# 2008, this book will be invaluable; the unique visual approach offers a far from lightweight treatment of C# 2008, so even the most experienced programmers will come away with a deeper understanding of the C# language.

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Nik Lever takes you through the journey from the basics of 3D manipulation all the way to morph objects and sub-division surfaces. On the way you get Visual C++ project files to study and software that runs on the Windows desktop. The free CD-ROM gives you a full-featured development environment for 3D character animation, so even if you find some of the maths and the code hard to follow straight away you can still create your own games. The game engine (Toon3DCreator) provided free and fully functional on the CD-ROM, even has an ActiveX control that allows you to distribute your work on the Internet. All source code for Toon3D is included on the CD. You will also get an insight into the artist’s problems; learn how to keep the characters interesting while not exhausting the game engine.

Understand the complete picture and make the most of your skills to help you succeed in, or break into the computer gaming industry with this comprehensive guide to programming for real-time 3D character animation.

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