Throughout the world, high-profile large organizations (aerospace and defense, automotive, banking, chemicals, financial service providers, healthcare, high tech, insurance, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, retail, telecommunications, and utilities) and governments are using SAP software to process their most mission-critical, highly sensitive data. With more than 100,000 installations, SAP is the world's largest enterprise software company and the world's third largest independent software supplier overall.
Despite this widespread use, there have been very few books written on SAP implementation and security, despite a great deal of interest. (There are 220,000 members in an on-line SAP 'community' seeking information, ideas and tools on the IT Toolbox Website alone.) Managing SAP user authentication and authorizations is becoming more complex than ever, as there are more and more SAP products involved that have very different access issues. It's a complex area that requires focused expertise.
This book is designed for these network and systems administrator who deal with the complexity of having to make judgmental decisions regarding enormously complicated and technical data in the SAP landscape, as well as pay attention to new compliance rules and security regulations.
Most SAP users experience significant challenges when trying to manage and mitigate the risks in existing or new security solutions and usually end up facing repetitive, expensive re-work and perpetuated compliance challenges. This book is designed to help them properly and efficiently manage these challenges on an ongoing basis. It aims to remove the 'Black Box' mystique that surrounds SAP security.
* The most comprehensive coverage of the essentials of SAP security currently available: risk and control management, identity and access management, data protection and privacy, corporate governance, legal and regulatory compliance.
* This book contains information about SAP security that is not available anywhere else to help the reader avoid the "gotchas" that may leave them vulnerable during times of upgrade or other system changes
*Companion Web site provides custom SAP scripts, which readers can download to install, configure and troubleshoot SAP.

Kismet is the industry standard for examining wireless network traffic, and is used by over 250,000 security professionals, wireless networking enthusiasts, and WarDriving hobbyists.
Unlike other wireless networking books that have been published in recent years that geared towards Windows users, Kismet Hacking is geared to those individuals that use the Linux operating system. People who use Linux and want to use wireless tools need to use Kismet. Now with the introduction of Kismet NewCore, they have a book that will answer all their questions about using this great tool. This book continues in the successful vein of books for wireless users such as WarDriving: Drive, Detect Defend.
*Wardrive Running Kismet from the BackTrack Live CD
*Build and Integrate Drones with your Kismet Server
*Map Your Data with GPSMap, KisMap, WiGLE and GpsDrive

Mathematical optimization is used in nearly all computer graphics applications, from computer vision to animation. This book teaches readers the core set of techniques that every computer graphics professional should understand in order to envision and expand the boundaries of what is possible in their work.
Study of this authoritative reference will help readers develop a very powerful tool- the ability to create and decipher mathematical models that can better realize solutions to even the toughest problems confronting computer graphics community today.
The authors are renowned researchers from IMPA, the Brazilian National Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics.
*Distils down a vast and complex world of info on optimization into one short, self-contained volume especially for computer graphics
*Helps CG professionals identify the best technique for solving particular problems quickly, by categorizing the most effective algorithms by application
*Keeps readers current by supplementing the focus on key, classic methods with special end-of-chapter sections on cutting-edge developments

In the last decade there has been a phenomenal growth in interest in crime pattern analysis. Geographic information systems are now widely used in urban police agencies throughout industrial nations. With this, scholarly interest in understanding crime patterns has grown considerably. ""Artificial Crime Analysis Systems: Using Computer Simulations and Geographic Information Systems"" discusses leading research on the use of computer simulation of crime patterns to reveal hidden processes of urban crimes, taking an interdisciplinary approach by combining criminology, computer simulation, and geographic information systems into one comprehensive resource.

Computer graphics systems are capable of generating stunningly realistic images of objects that have never physically existed. In order for computers to create these accurately detailed images, digital models of appearance must include robust data to give viewers a credible visual impression of the depicted materials. In particular, digital models demonstrating the nuances of how materials interact with light are essential to this capability.
This is the first comprehensive work on the digital modeling of material appearance: it explains how models from physics and engineering are combined with keen observation skills for use in computer graphics rendering.
Written by the foremost experts in appearance modeling and rendering, this book is for practitioners who want a general framework for understanding material modeling tools, and also for researchers pursuing the development of new modeling techniques. The text is not a "how to" guide for a particular software system. Instead, it provides a thorough discussion of foundations and detailed coverage of key advances.
Practitioners and researchers in applications such as architecture, theater, product development, cultural heritage documentation, visual simulation and training, as well as traditional digital application areas such as feature film, television, and computer games, will benefit from this much needed resource.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Julie Dorsey and Holly Rushmeier are professors in the Computer Science Department at Yale University and co-directors of the Yale Computer Graphics Group. Francois Sillion is a senior researcher with INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique), and director of its Grenoble Rhone-Alpes research center.
* First comprehensive treatment of the digital modeling of material appearance;
* Provides a foundation for modeling appearance, based on the physics of how light interacts with materials, how people perceive appearance, and the implications of rendering appearance on a digital computer;
* An invaluable, one-stop resource for practitioners and researchers in a variety of fields dealing with the digital modeling of material appearance."

The range of topics covered in ""Emerging E-Collaboration Concepts and Applications"" are broad and representative of the state-of-the-art discussion of conceptual and applied ecollaboration issues. Business organizations in the last 10 years have increasingly relied on distributed collaborative processes to maintain their competitiveness. E-collaboration technologies are at the source of something that underlies most business, political, and even societal developments - intense human collaboration. ""Emerging E-Collaboration Concepts and Applications"" is organized in three main parts: conceptual and methodological issues, applied research and challenges, and research syntheses and debate.

Despite the pervasive rhetorics of immersion and embodiment found in industrial and social discourses, playing a video game is an exercise in non-linearity. The pervasiveness of trial and error mechanics, unforgiving game over screens, loading times, minute tweakings of options and settings, should lead us to consider video games as a medium that cannot eschew fragmentation. Every Game is an Island is an analysis and a critique of grey areas, dead ends and extremities found in digital games, an exploration of border zones where play and non-play coexist or compete. Riccardo Fassone describes the complexity of the experience of video game play and brings integral but often overlooked components of the gameplay experience to the fore, in an attempt to problematize a reading of video games as grandiosely immersive, all-encompassing narrative experiences. Through the analysis of closures and endings, limits and borders, and liminal states, this field-advancing study looks at the heart of a medium starting from its periphery.

As technology continues to evolve in organizations, it is vital to understand the impact that these advances will have on different aspects of the business environment as well as the opportunity for further improvement. Effects of IT on Enterprise Architecture, Governance, and Growth explores the influence of emerging technology on different viewpoints associated with contemporary enterprise. Emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach to the comprehension of organizational structure and dynamics, this book is an inclusive reference source for enterprise analysts, business managers, and IT managers, as well as upper-level students interested in a new framework for understanding business enterprise in the new digital era.

In global environments, healthcare organizations are required to be flexible and resilient in coping with uncertain and complex circumstances. ""Redesigning Innovative Healthcare Operation and the Role of Knowledge Management"" collects a compilation of chapters on how knowledge impacts the layout and design of the medical industry. A cutting-edge reference source within the field, this book provides comprehensive frameworks, constraints, and performances analyzed by experts within the healthcare sector.

A groundbreaking, flexible approach to computer science anddata science The Deitels' Introduction to Python for ComputerScience and Data Science: Learning to Program with AI, Big Data and the Cloudoffers a unique approach to teaching introductory Python programming,appropriate for both computer-science and data-science audiences. Providing themost current coverage of topics and applications, the book is paired withextensive traditional supplements as well as Jupyter Notebooks supplements.Real-world datasets and artificial-intelligence technologies allow students towork on projects making a difference in business, industry, government andacademia. Hundreds of examples, exercises, projects (EEPs) and implementationcase studies give students an engaging, challenging and entertainingintroduction to Python programming and hands-on data science. The book's modular architecture enables instructors toconveniently adapt the text to a wide range of computer-science anddata-science courses offered to audiences drawn from many majors.Computer-science instructors can integrate as much or as little data-scienceand artificial-intelligence topics as they'd like, and data-science instructorscan integrate as much or as little Python as they'd like. The book aligns withthe latest ACM/IEEE CS-and-related computing curriculum initiatives and withthe Data Science Undergraduate Curriculum Proposal sponsored by the NationalScience Foundation.

Too often the suggestion of using games and virtual environments in an educational setting is met with skepticism and objections. Many traditionally-oriented educators are simply not aware of the benefits that come from implementing digital games into an instructional environment. Serious Games and Virtual Worlds in Education, Professional Development, and Healthcare seeks to counter these doubts by explaining how digital environments can easily become familiar and beneficial for educational and professional development. Highlighting techniques beyond the traditional practice, this reference source is useful for researchers, academics, professionals, and students interested in the benefits to implementing these games into various aspects of our environment.

It was over a decade ago that experimental psychologists and media-effects researchers declared the debate on the effects of violent video gaming as "essentially over," referring to the way violence in videogames increases aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors in players. Despite the decisive tone of this statement, neither the presence nor popularity of digital games has since diminished, with games continuing to attract new generations of players to experience its technological advancements in the narration of violence and its techniques of depiction. Drawing on new insights achieved from research located at an intersection between humanities, social and computer sciences, Gareth Schott's addition to the Approaches in Digital Game Studies series interrogates the nature and meaning of the "violence" encountered and experienced by game players. In focusing on the various ways "violence" is mediated by both the rule system and the semiotic layer of games, the aim is to draw out the distinctiveness of games' exploitation of violence or violent themes. An important if not canonical text in the debates about video games and violence, Violent Games constitutes an essential book for those wishing to make sense of the experience offered by games as technological, aesthetic, and communicational phenomena in the context of issues of media regulation and the classification of game content "as" violence.

Tuning of SQL code is generally cheaper than changing the data model. Physical and configuration tuning involves a search for bottlenecks that often points to SQL code or data model issues. Building an appropriate data model and writing properly performing SQL code can give 100%+ performance improvement. Physical and configuration tuning often gives at most a 25% performance increase.
Gavin Powell shows that the central theme of Oracle10gR2 Performance Tuning is four-fold: denormalize data models to fit applications; tune SQL code according to both the data model and the application in relation to scalability; create a well-proportioned physical architecture at the time of initial Oracle installation; and most important, mix skill sets to obtain the best results.
* Fully updated for version 10gR2 and provides all necessary transition material from version 9i
* Includes all three aspects of Oracle database tuning: data model tuning, SQL & PL/SQL code tuning, physical plus configuration tuning
* Contains experienced guidance and real-world examples using large datasets Emphasizes development as opposed to operating system perspective

This book presents an introduction to linear univariate and multivariate time series analysis, providing brief theoretical insights into each topic, and from the beginning illustrating the theory with software examples. As such, it quickly introduces readers to the peculiarities of each subject from both theoretical and the practical points of view. It also includes numerous examples and real-world applications that demonstrate how to handle different types of time series data. The associated software package, SSMMATLAB, is written in MATLAB and also runs on the free OCTAVE platform. The book focuses on linear time series models using a state space approach, with the Kalman filter and smoother as the main tools for model estimation, prediction and signal extraction. A chapter on state space models describes these tools and provides examples of their use with general state space models. Other topics discussed in the book include ARIMA; and transfer function and structural models; as well as signal extraction using the canonical decomposition in the univariate case, and VAR, VARMA, cointegrated VARMA, VARX, VARMAX, and multivariate structural models in the multivariate case. It also addresses spectral analysis, the use of fixed filters in a model-based approach, and automatic model identification procedures for ARIMA and transfer function models in the presence of outliers, interventions, complex seasonal patterns and other effects like Easter, trading day, etc. This book is intended for both students and researchers in various fields dealing with time series. The software provides numerous automatic procedures to handle common practical situations, but at the same time, readers with programming skills can write their own programs to deal with specific problems. Although the theoretical introduction to each topic is kept to a minimum, readers can consult the companion book 'Multivariate Time Series With Linear State Space Structure', by the same author, if they require more details.

The traditional division of labor between the database (which only stores and manages SQL and XML data for fast, easy data search and retrieval) and the application server (which runs application or business logic, and presentation logic) is obsolete. Although the books primary focus is on programming the Oracle Database, the concepts and techniques provided apply to most RDBMS that support Java including Oracle, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. This is the first book to cover new Java, JDBC, SQLJ, JPublisher and Web Services features in Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (the coverage starts with Oracle 9i Release 2). This book is a must-read for database developers audience (DBAs, database applications developers, data architects), Java developers (JDBC, SQLJ, J2EE, and OR Mapping frameworks), and to the emerging Web Services assemblers.
* Describes pragmatic solutions, advanced database applications, as well as provision of a wealth of code samples
* Addresses programming models which run within the database as well as programming models which run in middle-tier or client-tier against the database.
* Discusses languages for stored procedures: when to use proprietary languages such as PL/SQL and when to use standard languages such as Java; also running non-Java scripting languages in the database
* Describes the Java runtime in the Oracle database 10g (i.e., OracleJVM), its architecture, memory management, security management, threading, Java execution, the Native Compiler (i.e., NCOMP), how to make Java known to SQL and PL/SQL, data types mapping, how to call-out to external Web components, EJB components, ERP frameworks, and external databases.
* Describes JDBC programming and the new Oracle JDBC 10g features, its advanced connection services (pooling, failover, load-balancing, and the fast database event notification mechanism) for clustered databases (RAC) in Grid environments.
* Describes SQLJ programming and the latest Oracle SQLJ 10g features, contrasting it with JDBC
* Describes the latest Database Web services features, Web services concepts and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) for DBA, the database as Web services provider and the database as Web services consumer.
* Abridged coverage of JPublisher 10g, a versatile complement to JDBC, SQLJ and Database Web Services.