The ever decreasing price/performance ratio of microcontrollers makes it economically attractive to replace more and more conventional mechanical or electronic control systems within many products by embedded real-time computer systems. An embedded real-time computer system is always part of a well-specified larger system, which we call an...

This book applies the...

Information architecture combines IT skills with business skills in order to align the IT structure of an organization with the mission, goals, and objectives of its business. This friendly introduction to IT...

The popular C# programming language combines the high productivity of rapid application development languages with the raw power of C and C++. Updated to cover the new features of C# 4.0, including dynamic binding, named and optional parameters, and covariant and contravariant generic types, this release takes the language...

A senior database manager at one of the world’s largest banks once told me that the best way to secure Oracle is to unplug it from the wall…and he is probably right. In fact, this holds true for nearly every networked application. Unfortunately, for many of us turning off the database is not an option; we must find another way to...

Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) constitute a fascinating concept at the intersection of machine learning and evolutionary computation. LCS’s genetic search, generally in combination with reinforcement learning techniques, can be applied to both temporal and spatial problem-solving and promotes powerful search in a wide variety of...

In the last decade there has been an explosion of interest in the modeling and automation of business processes, and competence in this area is seen as increasingly critical to business competitiveness and stability. However, this has lead to a parallel explosion in solution approaches and technologies leading to a state-of-the-art that is...

Changes to design are an everyday task for many people involved in a software project. Refactoring recognizes this reality and systematizes the distinct process of modifying design and structure without affecting the external behavior of the system. As you consider the benefits of refactoring, you will need this complete guide to steer you...

Real World Adobe Illustrator CS5 is the definitive reference to Adobe's industry-standard vector graphics software. With an easy, engaging style, author and past Illustrator product manager Mordy Golding takes readers through all of the features of the program, explaining not only how to use the multitude of features but also why...

In the design-consulting business, I have been exposed to countless FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) designs, methodologies, and design techniques. Whether my client is on the Fortune 100 list or is just a start-up company, they will inevitably do some things right and many things wrong. After having been exposed to a wide variety of...

Techniques of vision-based motion analysis aim to detect, track, identify, and generally understand the behavior of objects in image sequences. With the growth of video data in a wide range of applications from visual surveillance to human-machine interfaces, the ability to automatically analyze and understand object motions from video...

IN THE 1980S, ADOBE DEVISED a powerful graphics imaging model that over time has formed the basis for the Adobe PostScript technologies. These technologies— a combination of the PostScript language and PostScript language–based graphics and text-formatting applications, drivers, and imaging systems—have forever changed the...