Book Description

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Unleashed is the 100% new, 100% practical developer’s guide to Microsoft’s most powerful version of BizTalk Server. Written by an expert team of Microsoft insiders and BizTalk MVPs, it reflects unsurpassed experience with all phases of BizTalk enterprise solutions development, from planning through deployment and administration.

The authors begin by introducing BizTalk Server’s architecture and key integration concepts. Next, they offer in-depth coverage of BizTalk’s foundational features, including schemas, maps, orchestrations, and pipelines. You’ll learn how to effectively utilize both standard and custom adapters; monitor integration services; leverage cloud computing via Windows Azure; implement operational BI solutions; and make the most of business rules and BizTalk’s Business Rules Engine (BRE).

The authors offer best practices and “in the trenches” tips for everything from managing deployments through implementing state-of-the-art mobile RFID solutions. No other book offers this much useful, pragmatic, and tested knowledge for successful BizTalk development.

Brian Loesgen is a Principal Architect Evangelist on Microsoft’s Azure ISV team. A six-time Microsoft MVP, he has extensive experience in building advanced enterprise, ESB, and SOA solutions. He has coauthored eight books, including SOA with .NET and Windows Azure. Charles Young, a principal consultant at Solidsoft, and Jan Eliasen, an IT architect at Logica, have each been honored repeatedly as BizTalk MVPs, and are highly respected bloggers in the BizTalk community. Download Now »

Book Description

Using agile methods and the tools of Visual Studio 2010, development teams can deliver higher-value software faster, systematically eliminate waste, and increase transparency throughout the entire development lifecycle. Now, Microsoft Visual Studio product owner Sam Guckenheimer and leading Visual Studio implementation consultant Neno Loje show how to make the most of Microsoft’s new Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools in your environment.

This book is the definitive guide to the application of agile development with Scrum and modern software engineering practices using Visual Studio 2010. You’ll learn how to use Visual Studio 2010 to empower and engage multidisciplinary, self-managing teams and provide the transparency they need to maximize productivity. Along the way, Guckenheimer and Loje help you overcome every major impediment that leads to stakeholder dissatisfaction—from mismatched schedules to poor quality, blocked builds to irreproducible bugs, and technology “silos” to geographic “silos.”

Coverage includes

• Accelerating the “flow of value” to customers in any software project, no matter how large or complex
• Empowering high-performance software teams and removing overhead in software delivery
• Automating “burndowns” and using dashboards to gain a real-time, multidimensional view of quality and progress Download Now »

Book Description

“In the Java world, security is not viewed as an add-on a feature. It is a pervasive way of thinking. Those who forget to think in a secure mindset end up in trouble. But just because the facilities are there doesn’t mean that security is assured automatically. A set of standard practices has evolved over the years. The Secure® Coding® Standard for Java™ is a compendium of these practices. These are not theoretical research papers or product marketing blurbs. This is all serious, mission-critical, battle-tested, enterprise-scale stuff.”
—James A. Gosling, Father of the Java Programming Language

An essential element of secure coding in the Java programming language is a well-documented and enforceable coding standard. Coding standards encourage programmers to follow a uniform set of rules determined by the requirements of the project and organization, rather than by the programmer’s familiarity or preference. Once established, these standards can be used as a metric to evaluate source code (using manual or automated processes).

The CERT® Oracle® Secure Coding Standard for Java™ provides rules designed to eliminate insecure coding practices that can lead to exploitable vulnerabilities. Application of the standard’s guidelines will lead to higher-quality systems–robust systems that are more resistant to attack. Such guidelines are required for the wide range of products coded in Java–for devices such as PCs, game players, mobile phones, home appliances, and automotive electronics.

After a high-level introduction to Java application security, seventeen consistently organized chapters detail specific rules for key areas of Java development. Download Now »

Book Description

Master the Crucial Non-Technical Skills Every Software Architect Needs!

Thousands of software professionals have the necessary technical qualifications to become architects, but far fewer have the crucial non-technical skills needed to get hired and succeed in this role. In today’s agile environments, these “soft” skills have grown even more crucial to success as an architect. For many developers, however, these skills don’t come naturally–and they’re rarely addressed in formal training. Now, long-time software architect Dave Hendricksen helps you fill this gap, supercharge your organizational impact, and quickly move to the next level in your career.

In 12 Essential Skills for Software Architects, Hendricksen begins by pinpointing the specific relationship, personal, and business skills that successful architects rely upon. Next, he presents proven methods for systematically developing and sharpening every one of these skills, from negotiation and leadership to pragmatism and vision.

From start to finish, this book’s practical insights can help you get the architect position you want–and thrive once you have it!

The soft skills you need…
…and a coherent framework and practical methodology for mastering them!

Relationship skills Download Now »

Book Description

Written by Sass creator Hampton Catlin and Michael Lintorn Catlin, Pragmatic Guide to Sass shows you how to you to improve your CSS, from the basics to advanced topics, from first installation to sprucing up your buttons. You’ll see how to code the right way in Sass thanks to short, clear examples. Two-page spreads show the explanation on one side and code examples on the other. You’ll learn how to improve your pages in minutes.

You’ll be able to perform amazing feats of CSS including using variables, calculating layouts, and modifying colors. Did you ever want to make a color 10% less saturated? We’ll show you how to do that without needing a calculator.

Plus, learn about Compass, Sass’s library of carefully built hacks, reusable parts, and frameworks. Find out how to shortcut cross-browser issues and develop mixins for shortening text and making lists more exciting. You’ll wonder how you spent all those years styling sites without it!

Make things even easier with Blueprint, and discover how to use its predefined classes that you can apply to your Web site. From selector scoping to bundling, debugging, and designing custom functions, Pragmatic Guide to Sass will help you build the pages you’ve always wanted.

What You Need:

• An installation of Sass and Compass
• Some basic command line knowledge Download Now »

Book Description

Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you’ll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles.

We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You’ll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily “cocktail party,” version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works–and what doesn’t–you’ll find out how to:

• Make quality everyone’s business, not just the testers.
• Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement.
• Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement.
• Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus.

Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you’ll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles.

About the Author
Henrik Kniberg is a coach and consultant at Crisp. Henrik’s background is a mix of development and management, and his passion is applying Lean and Agile principles to help debug, optimize, and refactor companies. Henrik is the author of Scrum and XP from the Trenches and Kanban & Scrum, making the most of both and a popular keynote speaker at conferences worldwide. Henrik lives in Stockholm with his wife and four kids Download Now »