This book offers a clear, concise guide for anyone involved in developing applications, evaluating products, designing systems, managing databases, or engineering products. It provides an understanding of the internals of transaction processing systems, describing how they work and how best to use them. It includes the architecture of application servers, transactional communications paradigms, and mechanisms for recovering from transaction and system failures.

The use of transaction processing systems has changed in the years since publication of the first edition. Electronic commerce has become a major focus for business data processing investments, from banking and stock purchase on the web, to eBay® auctions, to corporate database management. New standards, new technology and products, and new languages allow web services, REST/HTTP, and SOA to become leading styles of design for enterprise applications. With the help of this book and its rich examples, you will be able to develop, integrate, deploy and manage state-of-the-art transaction processing applications.

• Complete revision of the classic non-mathematical transaction processing reference for systems professionals.
• Updated to focus on the needs of transaction processing via the Internet¾ the main focus of business data processing investments, via web servers, SOA, and important TP technologies and standards.
• Retains the practical, deep, and thorough technical basis of the first edition, with expanded coverage of all topics, including transactional middleware, business process management, transaction synchronization, and database replication.

About the Author

By Philip A. Bernstein and Eric Newcomer

This book is an in-depth introduction to Erlang, a programming language ideal for any situation where concurrency, fault tolerance, and fast response is essential. Erlang is gaining widespread adoption with the advent of multi-core processors and their new scalable approach to concurrency. With this guide you'll learn how to write complex concurrent programs in Erlang, regardless of your programming background or experience. Written by leaders of the international Erlang community -- and based on their training material -- Erlang Programming focuses on the language's syntax and semantics, and explains pattern matching, proper lists, recursion, debugging, networking, and concurrency. This book helps you:

Understand the strengths of Erlang and why its designers included specific features Learn the concepts behind concurrency and Erlang's way of handling it Write efficient Erlang programs while keeping code neat and readable Discover how Erlang fills the requirements for distributed systems Add simple graphical user interfaces with little effort Learn Erlang's tracing mechanisms for debugging concurrent and distributed systems Use the built-in Mnesia database and other table storage features

Erlang Programming provides exercises at the end of each chapter and simple examples throughout the book. You'll also find an overview of the most important libraries.

About the Author

Francesco Cesarini is the founder and CTO of Erlang Training and Consulting . Having used Erlang on a daily basis since 1995, he started his career as an intern at Ericsson's computer science lab, the birth place of Erlang. He spent four years at Ericsson working with flagship Erlang projects, including the R1 release of the OTP middleware. He has taught Erlang/OTP to all parties involved in the software cycle, including developers, support engineers, testers as well as project and technical managers. In 2003, he also started teaching undergraduate students at the IT University of Gothenburg.

Soon after Erlang was released as Open Source, he founded Erlang Training and Consulting. With offices in the UK, Sweden, Poland (and soon the US), they have become the world leaders an Erlang based consulting, contracting, support, training and systems development. Their client base is spread on five continents and ranges from small start-ups to blue chip companies. In his role as CTO, is currently leading the research, development and consulting teams.

He is active in the Erlang community not only through regularly talks, seminars and tutorials at conferences worldwide, but also through his involvement in international research projects. He organises local Erlang user groups and with the help of his colleagues, runs the trapexit.org Erlang community website.

Simon Thompson is Professor of Logic and Computation in the Computing Laboratory of the University of Kent, where he has taught computing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels for the past twenty five years, and where he has been department head for the last six.

His research work has centered on functional programming: program verification, type systems, and most recently development of software tools for functional programming languages. His team has built the HaRe tool for refactoring Haskell programs, and is currently developing Wrangler to do the same for Erlang. His research has been funded by various agencies including EPSRC and the European Framework programme. His training is as a mathematician: he has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge and a D.Phil. in mathematical logic from Oxford.

He has written three books in his field of interest; Type Theory and Functional Programming published in 1991; Miranda: The Craft of Functional Programming (1995) and Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (2nd ed. 1999). These are all published by Addison Wesley.

Welcome to this book! Before we jump right in and start learning, I want to give you a heads up as to what you can expect going forward. If you’re brand-new to Photoshop, or intimidated by Photoshop, have no fear. We’ll go from the ground up. Even if you aren’t quite sure what Photoshop does, or who uses it, or what jobs you can get with it, we’ll catch you up to speed before you learn how to use it. Photoshop is not just for editing photographs anymore.

We’ll then look at the interface, which is the layout of the buttons, features, and workspace of Photoshop. At that point, you’ll feel comfortable enough to move on to the rest of the book, to actually start creating art.

If you have some prior experience with Photoshop, or if you are looking to use Photoshop for a specific purpose, feel free to jump around the book as you please. I’ve tried to create this book so that you can learn about whatever interests you, without having to drudge through material that doesn’t.

This book also takes a different focus than most Photoshop books do. Other Photoshop books tend to focus on photo editing, which is obviously a core part of what Photoshop does (hence the name). And we will cover a lot of information about image editing, of course. But we’ll also focus a lot on the creative side of Photoshop. For those of you who like to scrapbook, paint, design, or just be artistic, we’ll cover many tools for the job. We’ll even look briefly at using Photoshop for web graphics, 3D, mobile phones, and video.

Welcome to The Definitive Guide to Lift: A Scala-Based Web Framework! We hope that you find reading our work as informative, fun, and exciting as writing it has been for us. This book started out as some informal discussions between the Lift committers about a need for a good guide beyond the documentation contained on the Lift wiki and API documents. At the time, Lift had just passed version 0.7, and the mailing list was still relatively low traffic. In the interim, we’ve made it all the way to a 1.0 release, and the mailing list now has close to 900 members! In other words, Lift has really taken off.

When we sat down and began to outline the content of this book, we made a decision early on to be as comprehensive as possible. We knew that a lot of people would be reading our book having seen very little, if any, Lift code. We also knew that plenty of people who were comfortable with Lift fundamentals might want to exploit some of the more advanced functionality offered by Lift to make their applications even more appealing. With both of these readers in mind, this book is effectively broken into two parts. Chapters 1 through 6 cover the fundamentals of building a Lift application, from the basics of application architecture to how to handle forms, cookies, database access, and more. Chapters 7 through 13 cover the more advanced aspects of Lift, starting with an in-depth look at how Lift processes requests and moving on to topics like JavaScript, AJAX, Comet, and web services. We realize that writing a book that is accessible to newcomers while being relevant to advanced users is an ambitious goal, but we hope that you feel we’ve succeeded.

One important note that we want to make before you dive into this book is that Lift leverages a lot of the Scala language’s features to provide a powerful API. While we will briefly discuss some of these features in context, this book is not intended to be an introduction to or reference for Scala. However, several other books are available that do an excellent job at that task, notably David Pollak’s Beginning Scala (Apress, 2009). Since David started the whole Lift project from scratch, you can be sure that his book will be particularly relevant to people wanting to learn Scala so that they can use Lift.

Whether you’re a seasoned Liftie or just starting out, we hope that you enjoy reading this book!

The Definitive Guide to Plone, Second Edition has been completely updated to cover the latest version of Plone and its newest features. This book provides a complete and detailed overview of Plone. It is divided into three parts, which cover using, configuring, and developing and customizing Plone. After the coverage of Plone’s features, the case studies in the final part of the book reveal the true power of Plone. These case studies demonstrate Plone’s ability to handle all kinds of requirements, while retaining an easy–to–use interface for users. As when you’re working with Plone itself, you can choose where to start in this book and how best to apply it to your own needs.

With Plone, anyone can manage a website or work with an efficient intranet. Start reading The Definitive Guide to Plone, Second Edition right away, and the World Wide Web will be yours!

• Fully covers content management with Plone in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
• Shows how to configure, administer, and maintain Plone
• Details the development of custom applications with Plone
• Includes case studies that show how Plone is already being deployed across networks and businesses

What you’ll learn

In this book you will learn:

• Plone development fundamentals
• How to customize Plone to develop new functionality
• About the design and architecture of Plone
• How to use relational databases with Plone
• How to integrate Plone with other applications
• How to optimize and improve the performance of Plone websites
• How to secure Plone websites
• How to internationalize/localize Plone websites
• How to create and use the publication work flow

Who is this book for?

This book serves as both an introduction to those who have never used this powerful CMS and as a reference for those wishing to expand and deepen their knowledge of Plone–in short, all Plone users and all those who want to use an open source CMS.

About the Author

Redomino is an Italian company founded by a group of software consultants who truly believe in the Open Source culture and work with Plone since this software was born, participating in the community as developers and supporters. Translating their passion in a business, they had the opportunity to bring Plone to many major Italian companies.

Redomino is a content management solutions provider, its team specializes in the production of competitive, innovative and practical e–Business solutions, professional web sites, intranets, e–commerce solutions and other Web applications, in consulting, design and hosting services and has developed in years specific training skills and experience, above all on Plone, Zope, Python and Linux.

Andy McKay is a principal of Enfold Systems and an active contributor to a variety of Python-based open source projects. He is also a core developer of the Plone content management system. McKay maintains ZopeZen.org, a website dedicated to Zope-based applications and Zope extensions.

As you browse through this second edition of How to Build Your Own Underground Home, you must be asking yourself." What more can he find to write about after three previous books on the subject of underground homes."

The answer is basic. Like many subjects that are surrounded by good old yankee ingenuity, improvements and advancements are constantly being made. This second edition includes the pertinent information that has come to light since 1978 in the field of earth-sheltered living.

Consider that when the first edition was writ-ten energy was the predominate word of the day. Today earth-sheltered homes are being built more for a preferred architectural style than for the energy-savings factor. As you read on you will definitely notice the influence the 1980s are having on design and materials.

Earth-sheltered homes are now being ac-cepted as a modem style of home as compared to the sideshow they once were. To repeat a phrase I have used in my previous books, earth-sheltered living is an idea whose time has come.

If you want to learn to create 3-D models using Google SketchUp, this Missing Manual is the ideal place to start. Filled with step-by-step tutorials, this entertaining, reader-friendly guide will have you creating detailed 3-D objects, including building plans, furniture, landscaping plans--even characters for computer games--in no time.

Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual offers a hands-on tour of the program, with crystal-clear instructions for using every feature and lots of real-world examples to help you pick up the practical skills you need. Learn to use the basic tools, build and animate models, and place your objects in Google Earth. With this book, you will:

• Learn your way around the SketchUp workspace, and explore the differences between working in 2-D and 3-D
• Build simple 3-D shapes, save them as reusable components, and use SketchUp's Outliner to show or hide them as you work
• Tackle a complicated model building with lots of detail, and discover timesaving tools for using many components
• Animate the model by creating an interior walkthrough of your building
• Dress up your model with realistic material shading and shadows, and place it in Google Earth

It's easy to get started. Just download the program from Google.com, and follow the instructions in this book. You'll become a SketchUp master in a jiffy.

About the Author

Christopher Grover lives in Fairfax, California with his wife and two daughters. Chris received degrees in Creative Writing and Film from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He's worked as a technical writer, advertising copywriter and product publicist for more than 25 years. His freelance articles have been published in a variety of magazines from Fine Homebuilding to CD-ROM World. Chris's latest project is launching Bolinas Road Creative, an agency that helps small businesses promote their products and services. He's also the author of Word 2007: The Missing Manual and Word 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual.

With this book, you can build exciting, scalable web applications quickly and confidently, using Google App Engine -- even if you have little or no experience in programming or web development. App Engine is one of the most exciting web technologies to appear in the last year, providing a simple, easy-to-use application framework with basic web tools. While Google's own tutorial assumes significant development experience, Using Google App Engine is for anyone who wants to get started with this platform. By the end of the book, you'll know how to build complete, interactive applications and deploy them to "the cloud," using the same servers that power Google applications. You will:

Get an overview of all the technologies necessary to use Google App Engine Learn how to use Python, HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), HTTP, and DataStore, App Engine's database Grasp the technical aspects necessary to create sophisticated, dynamic web applications Understand what's required to deploy your applications to Google servers

In addition to being a foundational resource for beginning programmers, Using Google App Engine is also an excellent book for experienced programmers who want to acquire working knowledge of web technologies. Building web applications used to be for experts only, but with Google App Engine -- and this book -- anyone can create a dynamic web presence.

About the Author

Charles Severance is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, and works with the IMS Global Learning Consortium as the IMS Developer Network Coordinator. He's the author of High Performance Computing, Second Edition (O'Reilly). His home page is http://www.dr-chuck.com.

It is stated as follows in the 164th verse of Surah al-Baqarah that one of the purposes of the Qur’an’s revelation is to think, "In the creation of the heavens and earth, and the alternation of the night and day, and the ships which sail the seas to people’s benefit, and the water which Allah sends down from the sky – by which He brings the Earth to life when it was dead and scatters about in it creature of every kind-- And varying directions of the winds, and the clouds subservient between heaven and earth, there are signs for people who use there intellect".

Hundreds of similar verses in the Qur’an summon people to think on those being that created. When a person examines his own body or any other living thing in nature, in it he sees design, art, plan, and intelligence. This book is written to indicate some of the numerous signs of Allah.

Wood Coatings addresses the factors responsible for the performance of wood coatings in both domestic and industrial situations. The term 'wood coatings' covers a broad range of products including stains, varnishes, paints and supporting ancillary products that may be used indoors or outdoors.

Techniques for coating wood go back many centuries but in recent decades there has been a move towards more environmentally-friendly materials, for example, the use of water-borne rather than solvent-borne chemicals.

A major objective of  Wood Coatings is to explain the underlying factors that influence selection, application and general operational issues. Basic information on the chemistry and technology of coatings is included for the benefit of students and laboratory technicians. Additionally, the book includes individual chapters of interest to architects, specifiers, and industrial users.

* Offers up-to-date guidance on current availability and usage of wood coatings
* Provides the reader with a basic understanding of both coating and substrate interactions
* Covers both architectural (trade and DIY) and industrial sectors