Effective

WPF and Silverlight are unlike any other user interface (UI) technologies. They have been built to a new paradigm that—if harnessed correctly—can yield unprecedented power and performance. This book shows you how to control that power to produce clean, testable, maintainable code.

It is now recognized that any non-trivial WPF or Silverlight application needs be designed around the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) design pattern in order to unlock the technology's full data-binding potential. 

However, the knowledge of how to do this is missing from a large part of the development community—even amongst those who work with WPF and Silverlight on a daily basis. Too often there is a reliance on programmatic interaction between controls and not enough trust in the technologies' data-binding capabilities. This leads to a clouding of design values and an inevitable loss of performance, scalability, and maintainability throughout the application.

Pro WPF and Silverlight MVVM will show you how to arrange your application so that it can grow as much as required in any direction without danger of collapse.

What you'll learn

Who this book is for

Developers that wish to learn how to architect WPF or Silverlight applications to ensure maintainability, testability, and separation of concerns.

Although recognized as a key to the design process, prototyping often falls victim to budget cuts, deadlines, or lack of access to sophisticated tools. This can lead to sloppy and ineffective prototypes or the abandonment of them altogether. Rather than lose this important step, people are turning to Microsoft Excel® to create effective, simple, and inexpensive prototypes. Conveniently, the software is available to nearly everyone, and most are proficient in its basic functionality.

Effective Prototyping with Excel offers how-to guidance on how everyone can use basic Excel skills to create prototypes - ranging from narrative wire frames to hi-fidelity prototypes. A wide array of software design problems and business demands are solved via practical step-by-step examples and illustrations.

. Step-by-step guide to prototyping with a simple and affordable tool nearly everyone already has on their desktop.
. Quickly and easily allows web and software designers to explore usability, design alternatives, and test theories prior to starting production.
. Perfect companion to Effective Prototyping for Software Makers - with the same author team and full-color treatment, useful case studies, and hands-on exercises.

Virtual Reality has turned the corner from being a mere laboratory novelty to become a valuable tool with practical applications in many fields. From best-selling VR guru Bill Sherman comes Developing Virtual Reality Applications - a comprehensive compendium that examines over 50 unique and foundational VR applications in Business, Science, Medicine, Education, Spatial Studies, Public Safety, and Entertainment industries. Each chapter contains one or more key applications that are explored in depth, as well as examples of these applications in their most recent form and the most current research being conducted. The book also cross-references techniques between different application areas, synthesizing the data into a coherent whole that describes overall VR trends and fundamental best practices. Such synergy gives you a hands-on guide for developing your own applications, and provides an enhanced, longitudinal view of VR development. By promoting mobility across disciplines, Developing Virtual Reality Applications becomes an indispensable one-stop reference for anyone working in this burgeoning field.

• Presents a wide variety of detailed application descriptions across ALL areas of industry, providing you with practical ideas for VR development in ANY area of interest!




• Cross references development techniques between different application areas, supplying you with fundamental best practices across disciplines!




• Includes an online and media-rich companion site with hours of footage from application demonstrations, which puts you in the middle of the action!
  

Learning the fundamentals of XML might take a programmer a week. Learning how to use XML effectively might take a lifetime. While many books have been written that teach developers how to use the basic syntax of XML, this is the first one that really focuses on how to use XML well. This book is not a tutorial. It is not going to teach you what a tag is or how to write a DTD (Document Type Definition). Instead it's going to tell you when, why, where, and how to use such tools effectively (and equally important when not to use them).Since XML has become a fundamental underpinning of new software systems, it becomes important to ask new questions, not just what XML is, but how does one use it effectively? Which techniques work and which don't? Perhaps most importantly, which techniques appear to work at first but fail to scale as systems are further developed? This book answers these questions. It is not enough to write programs that compile and produce the expected results. It is important to write code that is extensible, legible, and maintainable. XML can be used to produce robust, extensible, maintainable systems.

(Pearson Education) Working solutions to programming challenges faced by Java developers on a daily basis, revealing what to do to produce clear, robust and efficient code. Include rules in short essay form, and the author's 'war stories,' giving advice and insights into nuances of the language. Softcover.

"With this book, Ted Neward helps you make the leap from being a good Java enterprise developer to a great developer!"
—John Crupi, Sun Distinguished Engineer coauthor, Core J2EE Patterns

If you want to build better Java enterprise applications and work more efficiently, look no further. Inside, you will find an accessible guide to the nuances of Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development. Learn how to:

• Use in-process or local storage to avoid the network, see item 44
• Set lower isolation levels for better transactional throughput, see item 35
• Use Web services for open integration, see item 22
• Consider your lookup carefully, see item 16
• Pre-generate content to minimize processing, see item 55
• Utilize role-based authorization, see item 63
• Be robust in the face of failure, see item 7
• Employ independent JREs for side-by-side versioning, see item 69

Ted Neward provides you with 75 easily digestible tips that will help you master J2EE development on a systemic and architectural level. His panoramic look at the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of J2EE development will address your most pressing concerns. Learn how to design your enterprise systems so they adapt to future demands. Improve the efficiency of your code without compromising its correctness. Discover how to implement sophisticated functionality that is not directly supported by the language or platform. After reading Effective Enterprise Java, you will know how to design and implement better, more scalable enterprise-scope Java software systems.

Software test engineers: here is the first book to teach you how to build and use a fully automated GUI testing tool. Simply feed the GUI component under test, get the results, and fix the bugs. While the book's examples are written in C#, you can use your preferred language for developing the testing tool and download the complete tool from Sybex.com. The sole book that covers GUI test automation using CodeDom, Reflection, and data stores, here is a perfect complement to Kanglin Lee's previous book from Sybex--Effective Software Test Automation. This is a unique product--and it works!

A hands-on guide to testing techniques that deliver reliable software and systems


Testing even a simple system can quickly turn into a potentially infinite task. Faced with tight costs and schedules, testers need to have a toolkit of practical techniques combined with hands-on experience and the right strategies in order to complete a successful project. World-renowned testing expert Rex Black provides you with the proven methods and concepts that test professionals must know. He presents you with the fundamental techniques for testing and clearly shows you how to select and apply successful strategies to test a system with budget and time constraints.

Black begins by discussing the goals and tactics of effective and efficient testing. Next, he lays the foundation of his technique for risk-based testing, explaining how to analyze, prioritize, and document risks to the quality of the system using both informal and formal techniques. He then clearly describes how to design, develop, and, ultimately, document various kinds of tests. Because this is a hands-on activity, Black includes realistic, life-sized exercises that illustrate all of the major test techniques with detailed solutions.

By the end of this book, you'll know more about the nuts and bolts of testing than most testers learn in an entire career, and you'll be ready to put those ideas into action on your next test project.

With the help of real-world examples integrated throughout the chapters, you'll discover how to:
* Analyze the risks to system quality
* Allocate your testing effort appropriately based on the level of risk
* Choose the right testing strategies every time
* Design tests based on a system's expected behavior (black box) or internal structure (white box)
* Plan and perform integration testing
* Explore and attack the system
* Focus your hard work to serve the needs of the project

The author's companion Web site provides exercises, tips, and techniques that can be used to gain valuable experience and effectively test software and systems.

Wiley Technology Publishing Timely. Practical. Reliable.

Visit the author's Web site at http://www.rexblackconsulting.com/

Topics include: Automated Testing, Nonfunctional Testing, and Managing the Test Execution. Softcover.

Did you know that the U.S. loses $59.5 billion per year due to inadequate software testing? With this revolutionary book, that's about to end! Applied Software Test Automation teaches you how to build a fully automated testing tool that you can immediately use for your software development projects. Simply feed the software under test, get the test result, and fix the bugs. You can even use your preferred languages for developing the testing tool. Coverage includes: CodeDom techniques for generating test scripts; using XML and spreadsheets for test data stores; and detail review of Reflection. All source code presented in the book is derived from real-world scenarios.