This volume provides new methodological developments in data analysis and classification. A wide range of topics is covered that includes the measurement of similarity and dissimilarity, methods for classification and clustering, network and graph analyses, analysis of symbolic data, and web mining. Apart from structural and theoretical results the book shows how to apply the proposed to a variety of problems, for example in medicine, microarray analysis, social network structures, and music. The combination of new methodological advances with the wide range of real applications collected in this volume is of special value for researchers when choosing the appropriate among newly developed analytical tools for their research problems in classification and data analysis.

Conceptual modeling has always been one of the cornerstones for information systems engineering as it describes the general knowledge of the system in the so-called conceptual schema.Krogstie, Opdahl and Brinkkemper compiled 20 contributions from renowned researchers covering all aspects of conceptual modeling on the occasion of Arne Sølvberg’s 67th birthday. Many friends of this information systems modeling pioneer happily contributed their latest research results from fields like data modeling, goal-oriented modeling, agent-oriented modeling, and process-oriented modeling. Overall, the contributions reflect the most important developments and application areas of conceptual modeling in recent years, and they also pinpoint trends in conceptual modeling for the next decade.
This wide selection corresponds to the broad spectrum of Arne’s activities and long-term responsibilities with the VLDB Endowment, IFIP, and ERCIM. Arne was presented with this book at CAiSE 2007, when the event which he cofounded in 1989 returned to his hometown of Trondheim. 

"Plant engineers and maintenance managers know from experience: All manufacturing equipment will break down, often at the worst possible moment. To survive in today's lean-and-mean manufacturing environment, companies must head off these breakdowns with a preventive-maintenance management program that is both systematic and flexible — and geared toward minimizing downtime and maximizing equipment life. Fundamentals of Preventive Maintenance provides readers with an easy-to-follow, economically sensible maintenance and workorder management program. This results-driven guidebook outlines a 7-step process for designing and implementing the program, describing what needs to be done — and why. Designed to transform an often unwieldy program into one that can be effectively managed, it provides hands-on techniques for: * Establishing critical scheduling protocols * Managing the daily workorder schedule * Developing and issuing preventive maintenance workorders * Monitoring the program and making improvements"

Model-driven development has become the most important new paradigm in software development and has already demonstrated considerable impact in reducing time to market and improving product quality. However, the development of high-quality systems not only requires systematic development processes but also systematic test processes.

This book is about systematic, model-driven test processes in the context of UML. As UML provides only limited means for the design and development of test artifacts, a consortium was formed by the Object Management Group (OMG) to develop a UML profile for model-driven testing – the UML Testing Profile (UTP), an official OMG standard since 2005.

Written by the original members of this standardization group, this book shows you how to use UML to test complex software systems. The authors introduce UTP step-by-step, using a case study that illustrates how UTP can be used for test modeling and test specification. You’ll learn how UTP concepts can be used for functional and non-functional testing, with example applications and best practices for user-interfaces and service oriented architectures. In addition, the authors demonstrate how to apply UTP using frameworks like TTCN-3 and the JUnit test framework for Java.

This book is the definitive reference for the only UML-based test specification language, written by the creators of that language. It is supported by an Internet site that provides information on the latest tools and uses of the profile.

This book shows how to build a telephony system for your home or business using the free and open source application, Asterisk. 'Building a Telephony System with Asterisk' takes you step-by-step through the process of installing and configuring Asterisk. It shows you how to make a deployment plan, and how to create a dial plan. The book also presents example configurations for using Asterisk in three different scenarios: for small and home offices, small businesses, and Hosted PBX. With an engaging style and excellent way of presenting information, this book makes a complicated subject very easy to understand.

Asterisk is a powerful and flexible open source framework for building feature-rich telephony systems. As a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) which connects one or more telephones, and usually connects to one or more telephone lines, Asterisk offers very advanced features, including station-to-station calls, line trunking, call distribution, call detail rerecords, and call recording. Asterisk can be used to provide Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The power and flexibility of a programmable phone system gives us the ability to respond to our customers in meaningful ways. Asterisk has also a fully-functional voicemail system included. It supports voicemail contexts so that multiple organizations can be hosted from the same server. It supports different time zones so that users can track when their phone calls come in. It even provides the option to notify the recipient of new messages via email. In fact, we can even attach the message in audio! Finally, Asterisk is a Voice Over IP (VoIP) system. The benefits of VoIP are numerous. For instance, we can have multiple users using the same Asterisk service from a variety of locations; we can have users in the local office using PSTN phones or IP phones; we can have remote VoIP users; we can even have entire Asterisk systems operated and run completely separately but with integrated routing; We can have an extension anywhere we have a reasonably fast Internet connection, which means employees can have an extension on the phone system at home if they have a broadband connection. The benefits are too many to list.
Flexibility often means complexity, and this is true in the case of Asterisk. This book is all you need to understand and use Asterisk to build the telephony system that meets your need. You will learn how to use the many features that Asterisk provides you with.

From car manufacturing to the production of niche products, welding is now one of the most widespread and successful applications of industrial robotics. Welding Robotics: Technology, System Issues and Application is a detailed overview of robotic welding at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The last few years-worth of evolution in robotic welding are described, illustrating their rapid innovations and featuring: Welding Technology; Sensors and Sensing Techniques; Industrial robotic welding systems; and Actual industrial application of modern-day robotic welding techniques. Containing worked examples and problems throughout the book, Welding Robotics: Technology, System Issues and Application will be an ideal guide for students of robotics and manufacturing engineering who wish to gain a full understanding of the latest robot welding technologies as well a useful reference for active researchers and those working in industry. The book signposts future developments and aims to give readers the information that they need to contribute to the next wave of development of a growing and important area of manufacturing technology.

Thanx 2 vorobej

Game Development Series
This book covers all of the elements necessary to create a Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP or short Windows-based Direct3D/DirectX Graphics game for the PC, including:
• 3D graphics and algorithms
• Game programming techniques and data structures
• Using 3D files to construct game worlds
• Programming your own character engine with a character animation system
• DirectX Graphics programming
• And more!

ou don't have to know everything about a car to drive one, and you don't need to know everything about Ruby to start programming with it. Written for both experienced and new programmers alike, Learning Ruby is a just-get-in-and-drive book — a hands-on tutorial that offers lots of Ruby programs and lets you know how and why they work, just enough to get you rolling down the road.
Interest in Ruby stems from the popularity of Rails, the web development framework that's attracting new devotees and refugees from Java and PHP. But there are plenty of other uses for this versatile language. The best way to learn is to just try the code! You'll find examples on nearly every page of this book that you can imitate and hack.
Briefly, this book:

• Outlines many of the most important features of Ruby
• Demonstrates how to use conditionals, and how to manipulate strings in Ruby. Includes a section on regular expressions
• Describes how to use operators, basic math, functions from the Math module, rational numbers, etc.
• Talks you through Ruby arrays, and demonstrates hashes in detail
• Explains how to process files with Ruby
• Discusses Ruby classes and modules (mixins) in detail, including a brief introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP)
• Introduces processing XML, the Tk toolkit, RubyGems, reflection, RDoc, embedded Ruby, metaprogramming, exception handling, and other topics
• Acquaints you with some of the essentials of Rails, and includes a short Rails tutorial.

Each chapter concludes with a set of review questions, and appendices provide you with a glossary of terms related to Ruby programming, plus reference material from the book in one convenient location. If you want to take Ruby out for a drive, Learning Ruby holds the keys.

As the World Wide Web continues to expand, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to obtain information efficiently. Because most search engines read format languages such as HTML or SGML, search results reflect formatting tags more than actual page content, which is expressed in natural language. Spinning the Semantic Web describes an exciting new type of hierarchy and standardization that will replace the current "web of links" with a "web of meaning." Using a flexible set of languages and tools, the Semantic Web will make all available information — display elements, metadata, services, images, and especially content — accessible. The result will be an immense repository of information accessible for a wide range of new applications. This first handbook for the Semantic Web covers, among other topics, software agents that can negotiate and collect information, markup languages that can tag many more types of information in a document, and knowledge systems that enable machines to read Web pages and determine their reliability. The truly interdisciplinary Semantic Web combines aspects of artificial intelligence, markup languages, natural language processing, information retrieval, knowledge representation, intelligent agents, and databases.
Thanks, vorobej!!

Real-time Systems Development is a text for computing students who want to understand more about the development of software for real-time applications, involving concurrent programming, multi-tasking, data i/o and embedded processors. The book has been written to cover single semester final year undergraduate options or MSc modules in the area of real-time systems design and implementation. Assuming a certain level of general systems design and programming experience, this text will extend students knowledge and skills into an area of computing which has increasing relevance in a modern world of telecommunications and intelligent equipment using embedded microcontrollers…

* Concise treatment delivers material in manageable sections
* Includes handy glossary, references and practical exercises based on familiar scenarios
* Supporting website contains slides, solutions to problems and software examples

As more and more of our daily technology depends on embedded microprocessors, the demand for good real-time software has grown enormously. So it is unfortunate that computer science students frequently only develop and run programs on standard desktop Windows platforms. This leaves them somewhat unprepared for the extra problems encountered should they end up producing code for a new DVD player, a mobile handset or an Internet packet router. This text reveals some of the particular difficulties encountered when designing for real-time systems, and the alternative routes available for software realization. It is perhaps a shame that so few programmers have the opportunity to study the science and art of real-time systems before being confronted by their first real-time project. As a large proportion of new domestic and leisure equipment relies on microprocessors for basic operations, the world might be a safer and less frustrating experience for all of us if this situation could be rectified.