"Make your home smarter, safer, and more fun--and save money, too! Home automation is finally practical, useful, and easy! Now, you can control your home exactly the way you want to, without paying monthly fees. This book shows how to do it all yourself, with today's simpler, more reliable, less expensive technologies."--From publisher.

After a quick glance at the plant floor, it is very easy to see the industrial automation industry interoperates with other functions within the enterprise. Trying to keep up with changing technologies, however, is never easy and the industrial automation environment is no exception. Whether you are a student just starting out or are a top-level executive or manager well-versed in one domain, but have limited knowledge of the industrial automation industry, itA's easy to find yourself adrift in this evolving industry. That is where this easy-to-read book comes in; it provides a basic functional understanding in the field of industrial automation. In an effort to understand this industry, the authors break down the barriers and confusion surrounding the technical details and terminology used in this converging field. They provide an introductory-level approach, covering most of the major industrial automation topics, such as distributed control systems (DCSs), programmable logic controllers (PLCs), manufacturing execution systems (MESs), and so on. You may even learn a recipe or two. This book is ideal for executives, business managers, information technologists, accountants, maintenance professionals, operators, production planners, just to name a few, and provides an in-depth but easy overview for people new to the field who want to quickly educate themselves.

Practical strategies and techniques for automating network infrastructure As networks grow ever more complex, network professionals are seeking to automate processes for configuration, management, testing, deployment, and operation. Using automation, they aim to lower expenses, improve productivity, reduce human error, shorten time to market, and improve agility. In this guide, expert practitioner Ivo Pinto presents all the concepts and techniques you'll need to move your entire physical and virtual infrastructure towards greater automation and maximize the value it delivers. Writing for experienced professionals, the author reviews today's leading use cases for automation, compares leading tools, and presents a deep dive into using the open source Ansible engine to automate common tasks. You'll find everything you need: from practical code snippets to real-world case studies to a complete methodology for planning strategy. This guide is for everyone seeking to improve network operations and productivity, including system, network, storage, and virtualization administrators, network and security engineers, and many other technical professionals and managers. You can apply its vendor-neutral concepts throughout your entire environment—from servers to the cloud, switches to security. Explore modern use cases for network automation, and compare today's most widely used automation tools Capture essential data for use in network automation, using standard formats such as JSON, XML, and YAML Get more value from the data your network can provide Install Ansible and master its building blocks, including plays, tasks, modules, variables, conditionals, loops, and roles Perform common networking tasks with Ansible playbooks: manage files, devices, VMs, cloud constructs, APIs, and more See how Ansible can be used to automate even the largest global network architectures Discover how NetDevOps can transform your approach to automation--and create a new NetDevOps pipeline, step by step Build a network automation strategy from the ground up, reflecting lessons from the world's largest enterprises

Left hand column Explore modern use cases for network automation, and compare today's most widely used automation tools Capture essential data for use in network automation, using standard formats such as JSON, XML, and YAML Get more value from the data your network can capture Install Ansible and master its building blocks, including plays, tasks, modules, variables, conditionals, loops, and roles Perform common networking tasks with Ansible playbooks: manage files, devices, VMs, cloud constructs, APIs, and more See how Ansible can be used to automate even the largest global network architectures Discover how NetDevOps can transform your approach to automation-and create a new NetDevOps pipeline, step by step Build a network automation strategy from the ground up, reflecting lessons from the world's largest enterprises This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press®, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers. Right hand column Practical strategies and techniques for automating network infrastructure As networks grow ever more complex, network professionals are seeking to automate processes for configuration, management, testing, deployment, and operation. Using automation, they aim to lower expenses, improve productivity, reduce human error, shorten time to market, and improve agility. In this guide, expert practitioner Ivo Pinto presents all the concepts and techniques you'll need to move your entire physical and virtual infrastructure towards greater automation, and maximize the value it delivers. Writing for experienced professionals, Ivo Pinto reviews today's leading use cases for automation, compares leading tools, and presents a deep dive into using the open source Ansible engine to automate common tasks. You'll find everything you need: from practical code snippets to real-world case studies to a complete methodology for planning strategy. This guide is for everyone seeking to improve network operations and productivity, including system, network, storage, and virtualization administrators, network and security engineers, and many other technical professionals and managers. You can apply its vendor-neutral concepts throughout your entire environment-from servers to the cloud, switches to security.

Learn to use PowerShell, Microsoft's scripting language, to automate real-world tasks that IT professionals and system administrators deal with every day. Save Time. Automate. PowerShell® is both a scripting language and an administrative shell that lets you control and automate nearly every aspect of IT. In PowerShell for Sysadmins, five-time Microsoft® MVP "Adam the Automator" Bertram shows you how to use PowerShell to manage and automate your desktop and server environments so that you can head out for an early lunch. You'll learn how to: Combine commands, control flow, handle errors, write scripts, run scripts remotely, and test scripts with the PowerShell testing framework, Pester Parse structured data like XML and JSON, work with common domains (like Active Directory, Azure, and Amazon Web Services), and create a real-world server inventory script Design and build a PowerShell module to demonstrate PowerShell isn't just about ad-hoc scripts Use PowerShell to create a hands-off, completely automated Windows deployment Build an entire Active Directory forest from nothing but a Hyper-V host and a few ISO files Create endless Web and SQL servers with just a few lines of code! Real-world examples throughout help bridge the gap between theory and actual system, and the author's anecdotes keep things lively. Stop with the expensive software and fancy consultants. Learn how to manage your own environment with PowerShell for Sysadmins and make everyone happy. Covers Windows PowerShell v5.1

If you're an iOS developer or QA professional tapping through an app to reproduce bugs or performance issues you thought were solved two releases ago, then this is your book. Learn how to script the user interface, assert correct behavior, stub external dependencies, reproduce performance problems, organize test code for the long haul, and automate the whole process so the machine does the work. You'll walk through a comprehensive strategy with techniques using Apple's tools that you can apply to your own apps. Automated user interface testing is an important part of a comprehensive testing strategy for iOS applications. By scrutinizing your app through the eyes and actions of the user, you raise confidence that features are wired up right and behave as you expect. Through this book you'll learn how to do full-stack testing of your iOS apps in both the simulator and on the device with Apple's built-in tools. You'll write behavioral tests in UI Automation that help protect against regressions. You'll write scripts to repeat steps in Instruments to reproduce performance bugs. With a little ingenuity, you'll build a workflow that gives the feedback you need. Grow a test suite by working with a real application that uses Core Data and network requests. Learn how to describe expected behavior in test scripts, launch the app in a specific state, and stub external dependencies for completely isolated and repeatable tests. Along the way, you'll practice how to organize your test code and run it hands-free from the command line. By the end, you'll have the tools and habits you need to tackle the unique testing problems you'll face while building best-of-breed native iOS apps for your users. What You Need You'll need a Mac running at least Mac OS X Lion (10.7) and Xcode 4.6.

The rapid evolution of computer science, communication, and information technology has enabled the application of control techniques to systems beyond the possibilities of control theory just a decade ago. Critical infrastructures such as electricity, water, traffic and intermodal transport networks are now in the scope of control engineers. The sheer size of such large-scale systems requires the adoption of advanced distributed control approaches. Distributed model predictive control (MPC) is one of the promising control methodologies for control of such systems. This book provides a state-of-the-art overview of distributed MPC approaches, while at the same time making clear directions of research that deserve more attention. The core and rationale of 35 approaches are carefully explained. Moreover, detailed step-by-step algorithmic descriptions of each approach are provided. These features make the book a comprehensive guide both for those seeking an introduction to distributed MPC as well as for those who want to gain a deeper insight in the wide range of distributed MPC techniques available.

The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What hap­pens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.

Automate your mobile app testing About This Book How to automate testing with Appium Apply techniques for creating comprehensive tests How to test on physical devices or emulators Who This Book Is For Are you a mobile developer or a software tester who wishes to use Appium for your test automation? If so, then this is the right book for you .You must have basic Java programming knowledge. You don't need to have prior knowledge of Appium. What You Will Learn Discover Appium and how to set up an automation framework for mobile testing Understand desired capabilities and learn to find element locators Learn to automate gestures and synchronize tests using Appium Take an incremental approach to implement page object pattern Learn to run Appium tests on emulators or physical devices Set up Jenkins to run mobile automation tests by easy to learn steps Discover tips and tricks to record video of test execution, inter app automation concepts Learn to run Appium tests in parallel on multiple devices simultaneously In Detail Appium is an open source test automation framework for mobile applications. It allows you to test all three types of mobile applications: native, hybrid, and mobile web. It allows you to run the automated tests on actual devices, emulators, and simulators. Today, when every mobile app is made on at least two platforms, iOS and Android, you need a tool that allows you to test across platforms. Having two different frameworks for the same app increases the cost of the product and time to maintain it as well. Appium helps save this cost. With mobile app growth exploding, mobile app automation is mainstream now. In this book, author Nishant Verma provides you with a firm grounding in the concepts of Appium while diving into how to set up appium & Cucumber-jvm test automation framework, implement page object design pattern, automate gestures, test execution on emulators and physical devices, and implement continuous integration with Jenkins. The mobile app we have referenced in this book is Quikr because of its relatively lower learning curve to understand the application. It's a local classifieds shopping app. Style and approach This book takes a practical, step-by-step approach to testing and automating individual apps such as native, hybrid, and mobile web apps using different examples.

"The Japanese samurai Musashi wrote: 'One can win with the long sword, and one can win with the short sword. Whatever the weapon, there is a time and situation in which it is appropriate.' "Similarly, we have the long RUP and the short RUP, and all sizes in between. RUP is not a rigid, static recipe, and it evolves with the field and the practitioners, as demonstrated in this new book full of wisdom to illustrate further the liveliness of a process adopted by so many organizations around the world. Bravo!" --Philippe Kruchten, Professor, University of British Columbia "The Unified Process and its practices have had, and continue to have, a great impact on the software industry. This book is a refreshing new look at some of the principles underlying the Unified Process. It is full of practical guidance for people who want to start, or increase, their adoption of proven practices. No matter where you are today in terms of software maturity, you can start improving tomorrow." --Ivar Jacobson, Ivar Jacobson Consulting "Kroll and MacIsaac have written a must-have book. It is well organized with new principles for software development. I encounter many books I consider valuable; I consider this one indispensable, especially as it includes over 20 concrete best practices. If you are interested in making your software development shop a better one, read this book!" --Ricardo R. Garcia, President, Global Rational User Group Council, www.rational-ug.org/index.php "Agile software development is real, it works, and it's here to stay. Now is the time to come up to speed on agile best practices for the Unified Process, and this book provides a great starting point." --Scott W. Ambler, practice leader, Agile Modeling "IBM and the global economy have become increasingly dependent on software over the last decade, and our industry has evolved some discriminating best practices. Per and Bruce have captured the principles and practices of success in this concise book; a must for executives, project managers, and practitioners. These ideas are progressive, but they strike the right balance between agility and governance and will form the foundation for successful systems and software developers for a long time." --Walker Royce, Vice President, IBM Software Services-Rational "Finally, the RUP is presented in digestible, byte-size pieces. Kroll and MacIsaac effectively describe a set of practices that can be adopted in a low-ceremony, ad hoc fashion, suited to the culture of the more agile project team, while allowing them to understand how to scale their process as needed." --Dean Leffingwell, author and software business advisor and executive "This text fills an important gap in the knowledge-base of our industry: providing agile practices in the proven, scalable framework of the Unified Process. With each practice able to be throttled to the unique context of a development organization, Kroll and MacIsaac provide software teams with the ability to balance agility and discipline as appropriate for their specific needs." --Brian G. Lyons, CTO, Number Six Software, Inc. In Agility and Discipline Made Easy, Rational Unified Process (RUP) and Open Unified Process (OpenUP) experts Per Kroll and Bruce MacIsaac share twenty well-defined best practices that you and your team can start adopting today to improve the agility, predictability, speed, and cost of software development. Kroll and MacIsaac outline proven principles for software development, and supply a number of supporting practices for each. You'll learn what problems each practice addresses and how you can best leverage RUP and OpenUP (an open-source version of the Unified Process) to make the practice work for you. You'll find proactive, prescriptive guidance on how to adopt the practices with minimal risk and implement as much or as little of RUP or OpenUP as you want. Learn how to apply sample practices from the Unified Process so you can Execute your project in iterations Embrace and manage change Test your own code Describe requirements from the user perspective Architect with components and services Model key perspectives Whether you are interested in agile or disciplined development using RUP, OpenUP, or other agile processes, this book will help you reduce the anxiety and cost associated with software improvement by providing an easy, non-intrusive path toward improved results--without overwhelming you and your team.