Sure you want to save money. We all do. But saving money is sometimes easier said than done. Did you know that there is a program probably already installed on your computer that can help you manage your money better? It’s Microsoft Excel, part of the Microsoft Office suite. Manage Your Money and Investments with Excel can help you take control of your finances with Excel. Learn how to:

*Perform basic financial calculations.
*Track and analyze investments.
*Compare mutual fund options.
*Manage mortgages, loans, and escrow accounts.
*Balance checking accounts and manage credit card debt.
*Track your net worth.

Use Assessments to Drive Process Improvements in Software, Systems, Human Resources, and Beyond

Pioneered by the world’s leading innovators in software engineering, assessments have evolved into a remarkably powerful tool for process improvement in areas ranging from systems to services, hardware to human resources.

Unlike audits, assessments are conducted from the inside. When handled correctly, assessments can help transform technical and managerial culture, dramatically improving both quality and profitability. In CMMI Assessments: Motivating Positive Change, two of the field’s most respected leaders show exactly how to use them for maximum business advantage. Writing for executives, managers, technical professionals, and assessors themselves, Marilyn Bush and Donna Dunaway illuminate every phase of the assessment process—from planning through post-assessment follow-up.

The authors begin with an expert overview of what assessments entail, when they make sense, how to set achievable goals for them, and how to lead them to success. Next, they “drill down” into each stage of the process, presenting step-by-step instructions and defining the roles and responsibilities of every participant. Coverage includes creating and training assessment teams; identifying assessment products; consolidating interview data and other onsite activities; presenting results; and using those results productively.

Drawing on their unsurpassed experience leading assessments and mentoring assessors, they offer deep insights into the real-world challenges and obstacles you’ll face—and proven solutions. They also present an extended case study showing how a real software development organization drove continuous improvement through four years of iterative assessments—moving from CMM Level 2 to elite Level 5 status, and driving dramatic business benefits along the way.

The definitive guide to penetrating and defending wireless networks.

Straight from the field, this is the definitive guide to hacking wireless networks. Authored by world-renowned wireless security auditors, this hands-on, practical guide covers everything you need to attack — or protect — any wireless network.

The authors introduce the ‘battlefield,’ exposing today’s ‘wide open’ 802.11 wireless networks and their attackers. One step at a time, you’ll master the attacker’s entire arsenal of hardware and software tools: crucial knowledge for crackers and auditors alike. Next, you’ll learn systematic countermeasures for building hardened wireless ‘citadels”including cryptography-based techniques, authentication, wireless VPNs, intrusion detection, and more.

Coverage includes:

*Step-by-step walkthroughs and explanations of typical attacks
*Building wireless hacking/auditing toolkit: detailed recommendations, ranging from discovery tools to chipsets and antennas
*Wardriving: network mapping and site surveying
*Potential weaknesses in current and emerging standards, including 802.11i, PPTP, and IPSec
*Implementing strong, multilayered defenses
*Wireless IDS: why attackers aren’t as untraceable as they think
*Wireless hacking and the law: what’s legal, what isn’t

If you’re a hacker or security auditor, this book will get you in. If you’re a netadmin, sysadmin, consultant, or home user, it will keep everyone else out.

Finally, there’s a book that treats Excel as the powerful development platform it really is, and covers every facet of developing commercial-quality Excel applications.

This is not a book for beginners. Writing for professional developers and true Excel experts, the authors share insider’s knowledge they’ve acquired building Excel applications for many of the world’s largest companiesincluding Microsoft. Professional Excel Development demonstrates how to get the utmost from Excel, addressing everything from application architectures through worksheet and userform design, charting, debugging, error handling and optimizing performance. Along the way, the authors offer best practices for every type of Excel development, from building add-ins through interacting with XML Web services. Coverage includes :
*Building add-ins to provide new Excel functions
*Designing effective worksheets, userforms and other user interface elements
*Leveraging Excel’s powerful data analysis features
*Creating sophisticated custom charts
*Handling errors, debugging applications and optimizing performance
*Using class modules and interfaces to create custom objects
*Understanding Windows API calls: when to use them, and how to modify them
*Adding worksheet functions with C-based XLLs
*Programming with databases
*Controlling external applications from Excel
*Integrating with Visual Basic 6, VB.NET and Visual Studio Tools for Office
*Using XML to import and export data and communicate with Web services
*Providing help, securing, packaging and distributing

The fastest route to true HTML/CSS mastery!

Need to build a web site? Or update one? Or just create some effective new web content? Maybe you just need to update your skills, do the job better.

Welcome. This book’s for you. We’ll leverage what you already know about the web, so you’ll go further, faster than you ever expected. You’ll master today’s best practices: the real nuts and bolts, not theory or hooey. You’ll learn through dozens of focused HTML, XHTML, and CSS examples: crafted for simplicity and easy to adapt for your own projects.

Need specific solutions? This book’s modular, visual, high-efficiency format delivers them instantly. Molly E. Holzschlag draws on her unparalleled experience teaching Web design and development. No other HTML/CSS guide covers this much, this well, this quickly. Dig in, get started, get results!

All you need to succeed with HTML, XHTML, and CSS in real-world projects
Learn how to build web pages that’ll work in any environment, on virtually any contemporary browser
Construct templates that simplify every page you develop
Structure and tag text so it’s easy to work with and manage
Add images, media, and scripts�quickly and reliably
Discover the right ways to use HTML tables
Build easy-to-use forms and validate your users’ input
Use CSS to take total control over your site’s look and feel
Master core CSS techniques: color, images, text styles, link effects, lists, navigation, and more
Control margins, borders, padding, positioning, floats, even Z-index
Design efficient, compatible, easy-to-manage CSS layouts
Includes concise XHTML and CSS annotated references: quick help for every language element

World-renowned expert Rebecca M. Riordan has written the definitive database design book for working developers who aren’t database experts. No matter how messy or complex your business challenge, Designing Effective Database Systems shows you how to design an effective, high-performance database to solve it.

Riordan begins by thoroughly demystifying the principles of relational design, making them accessible to every professional developer. Next, she offers the field’s clearest introduction to dimensional database modeling: practical insight for designing today’s increasingly important analytical applications.

One task at a time, Riordan illuminates every facet of database analysis and design for both OLAP and OLTP, showing how to avoid common architectural pitfalls that complicate development and reduce extensibility. The book concludes with comprehensive, expert guidance on designing databases for maximum usability. This book will teach you how to

*Understand relational database models, structures, relationships, and data integrity principles
*Define database system goals, criteria, scope, and work processes
*Construct accurate conceptual models: relationships, entities, domain analysis, and normalization
*Build efficient, secure database schema
*Master the elements of OLAP design: fact tables, dimension tables, snowflaking, and more
*Architect and construct easy, efficient interfaces for querying and reporting
8Learn from practice examples based on Microsoft’s Northwind sample database

Riordan has helped thousands of professionals master database design and development, earning Microsoft’s coveted MVP honor for her exceptional contributions. Nobody’s more qualified to help you master database designand apply it in your real-world environment.

Understanding basic SCM concepts, and the role, value, and components of SCM systems

Mastering IBM Rational’s Unified Change Management (UCM) model—including today’s most effective usage models, strategies, and policy configurations

Creating ClearCase repositories and establishing UCM environments, step-by-step

Working as a project manager in the ClearCase environment

Leveraging new ClearCase MultiSite and ClearQuest technologies to full advantage

Using the new ClearCase Remote Client to access centralized repositories across WANs

Monitoring ClearCase and tuning it for maximum performance

This book is valuable for everyone concerned with SCM: developers who wantSCM to be as intuitive and convenient as possible; project managers and technical leaders who must efficiently manage change; tools engineers; even IT managersevaluating SCM technologies.

How well do you really know Java? Are you a code sleuth? Have you ever spent days chasing a bug caused by a trap or pitfall in Java or its libraries? Do you like brainteasers? Then this is the book for you!

In the tradition of Effective Java?, Bloch and Gafter dive deep into the subtleties of the Java programming language and its core libraries. Illustrated with visually stunning optical illusions, Java? Puzzlers features 95 diabolical puzzles that educate and entertain. Anyone with a working knowledge of Java will understand the puzzles, but even the most seasoned veteran will find them challenging.

Most of the puzzles take the form of a short program whose behavior isn’t what it seems. Can you figure out what it does? Puzzles are grouped loosely according to the features they use, and detailed solutions follow each puzzle. The solutions go well beyond a simple explanation of the program’s behavior–they show you how to avoid the underlying traps and pitfalls for good. A handy catalog of traps and pitfalls at the back of the book provides a concise taxonomy for future reference.

Solve these puzzles and you’ll never again fall prey to the counterintuitive or obscure behaviors that can fool even the most experienced programmers.

Cascading Style Sheets, Third Edition, Designing for the Web Since its introduction in 1996, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has revolutionized web page design. Now, in 2004, most web pages use CSS, and many designers base their layouts entirely on CSS. To do so successfully requires a good understanding of how CSS works. The purpose of this book is to describe how designers can take full advantage of CSS 2.1, which is the newly released update of the specification. CSS s journey from an idea to a specification and then on to a specification designers can rely on has been long and arderous. The creator of the CSS Zen Garden (described in Chapter 12, “From HTML extenstions to CSS”) describes it this way: Littering a dark and dreary road lay the past relics of browser-specific tags, incompatible DOMs, and broken CSS support. Today, we must clear the mind of past practices. Web enlightenment has been achieved thanks to the tireless efforts of folk like the W3C, WaSP and the major browser 1 creators. Indeed, we believe the web is a more enlightened place now that CSS have matured to a stage where it can be used for advanced layouts in a range of browsers. This book will tell you all you need to know to start using CSS.

Use PHP to accomplish real-world, professional tasks. Incorporating five
hands-on projects, PHP Professional Projects is your key to unlocking the
power of PHP. Each project focuses on a specific PHP concept and is based on a
real-world situation. You will be able to use the skills that you develop
throughout the book to modify the projects as needed to fit your professional
needs.

Create a User Registration Form: Using various form elements, create a user
registration form for an online shopping site. You will use PHP script to track
form value and check for errors. Your PHP script will give you experience using
variables, operator, and control structures.

Store and Retrieve Data From Files: Using the registration form that you have
just created, you will learn how to store data in a file and to retrieve the
data using various file functions. You will learn the basics of file handling
such as reading and writing to a file as well as pack and unpack function.

Work with MYSQL Using PHP: Begin by creating a database table and inserting
data with a form and PHP script. Query your database table based on specific
criteria and allow results to be displayed. Further your understanding of
handling data storage and using PHP with a SQL database.

Create a Catalog and Shopping Cart: Cover all of the steps necessary to
create a product catalog and shopping cart with PHP beginning with user
registration. Learn how to add and remove products and customers and to send a
feedback message using the mail function.

Master User Authentication and Tracking: Learn how to configure HTTP
authentication on Apache and to create users. Begin with the basics of
password-based authentication and password storage. Then create a PHP script
that will validate users, and learn how to use cookies and sessions to track
users.