K2 blackpearl and the K2 platform is a large, powerful, "game-changing" application platform built on Microsoft technologies. Understanding it from top to bottom would be a great task for a single person, which is why we have gathered more than a dozen authors to supply you with the information to successfully transform your company into a process-oriented, efficient business that can grow with the K2 platform.
Since this is the first book on K2 blackpearl, you will find a broad range of topics in this book, from the market in which K2 blackpearl is aimed to the architecture of the platform, from how to approach process design to developing your own custom user manager.
The first part of the book is meant for everyone and provides an understanding of K2 blackpearl and where it fits in the marketplace. It is included to provide a framework for thinking about various aspects of process-driven applications, including how they differ from business process management techniques; identifying processes in your company to automate, the different pieces that make up a process; measuring the success of your efforts; and finally shifting your company's culture in the direction of process efficiency. This section may be the only section you need to read if you are sponsoring a process improvement effort in your company. If you are responsible for leading the effort, make sure to read Chapters 3 and 4.
The other parts are meant to provide details on how to effectively deploy and use K2 blackpearl and include a broad range of topics. Read what you are most interested in, but also make sure to read Chapter 8, which will give you a great foundation to start designing processes with K2 blackpearl. Chapter 14 is also recommended for everyone because it provides an overview of the available K2 Designers and how you can share projects among them.
If you are a developer, you may be tempted to flip through the book looking for code, and you will find some, but we also recommend reading much of the rest of the book to learn how the API and the K2 platform extensions fit within the overall process-driven application environment. Pay particular attention to Chapter 22 and the Appendix, which may save you hours of coding or give you a no-code solution to something that you may have thought would take hundreds of lines of code to accomplish.
If you are an administrators, focus on Parts II and IV, but also take a look at the other chapters to gain an understanding of how your users will be using K2.
K2 blackpearl is the main subject of this book, although we devote an entire chapter, Chapter 23, to the add-on product K2 connect to give you an understanding of how to bring SAP data into your processes. We also talk a bit about K2 blackpoint, particularly in the SharePoint chapters. Since K2 blackpoint is built on the K2 blackpearl foundation, many of the same concepts apply to that product as well, but we do not point out the differences between K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint. For that information browse to www.k2.com.
We recommend that you approach this book in parts and perhaps read or reference each part differently. If you are working on a team, each member of the team may find one part more interesting to them than the other sections; that is expected and is how we designed the book.
<ul>
<li>
Part I, “Introduction to K2 blackpearl and Process-Driven Applications”: The first four chapters discuss what K2 blackpearl is, how the applications you can design may or may not fit the business process management (BPM) model, how to go about identifying and designing processes, and last how to measure results and shift the culture of your company to a more process-oriented business.</li>
<li>
Part II, “Architecture and Installation Options for K2 blackpearl”: Chapters 5 and 6 will get you started. Installing the K2 blackpearl components is a necessary step before you can start designing processes, so in these two chapters you will gain an understanding of all of the pieces of the platform, the architecture, and the supporting technology, as well as ideas on how to plan out your development, QA/staging, and production environments.</li>
<li>
Part III, “K2 blackpearl Process Planning and Design Essentials”: Chapters 7 through 14 give you a ton of information about how to design, build, extend, and generally work with the main pieces of the platform. From a step-by-step tutorial on building your first process to how to share processes across the different K2 Designers, you'll learn all of what you need to really get ramped up. Pay particular attention to Chapters 8 and 11, which cover the basic things you need to know about process planning and the various concepts of process design with K2 blackpearl and then provide an in-depth view of the available forms technologies that you can use for user interaction with your processes. If you are particularly interested in SharePoint, make sure to read Chapters 12 and 13.</li>
<li>
Part IV, “Administration of K2 blackpearl”: Chapters 15 through 20 offer an administrator's view into the platform. Things like disaster recovery, logging, security, and using the K2 Workspace for notifications, reports, assigning process permissions, and recovering from errors are all key aspects of the platform that you or someone in your company will have to understand. This section gives you everything you need to know and probably more, including how to build your own user manager to plug into the K2 platform.</li>
<li>
Part V, “Advanced K2 blackpearl Concepts and Platform Extensions”: The last part includes Chapters 21 through 23, and these chapters are there to round out the discussion of the platform. You'll find information about using the Event Bus to surface outside events to the K2 server and a discussion of tailoring the platform and your processes to your particular needs by going beyond the default settings of the components that you learned about in Chapter 8. Finally you'll learn about the K2 connect platform extension, which allows data from SAP (and eventually any system for which a WCF LOB adapter is released) to be used within your processes.</li>
</ul>
There are some pieces of this book that you can sit down and read without needing a computer or access to K2 blackpearl at all, but much of this book requires you to have access to K2 blackpearl and the supporting applications as well. Whenever we talk about designing processes, we do so in the context of the K2 Designer for Visual Studio. To install this component you will need Visual Studio 2005. Support for Visual Studio 2008 may be available by the time this book is published, so look for that on www.k2.com.
For the server pieces of the platform, you will need a Windows Server 2003 environment (virtual or otherwise) and the additional components required by the K2 server.

Professional K2 blackpearl

Computers & Technology

Murphy, Colin

Schaffer, Eric

TALLEY

Montgomery, Jason

Geier, Chris

Anderson, Holly

Apergis, Jason

Del Piccolo, Sergio

Kaji, Codi

Leisegang, Shaun

Macori, Igor

Malherbe, Gabriel

O'CONNOR, CHRIS

Petro, Anthony

Programming Languages

Wrox

Murphy's Revenge

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Headline Book Publishing

Every song you never wanted to hear warbled again -- and then some. You've heard them all a thousand times before in the pub or at a late night hooley … Danny Boy, Biddy Mulligan, The Wild Colonial Boy. You've knocked back your Jemmy with a drop of water or your Vodka and red, breathed deeply and then tried desperately to remember the opening lines to your party piece. But all that comes out is 'la la di da di da la la'. Fear no more. They're all here in all their glory -- every word, every line, every chorus of the most popular Irish songs ever to be performed through that happy, misty haze of alcohol. The only thing we can't guarantee is your singing. But don't worry. Everyone will be so plastered they won't notice!

The Book of Irish Songs yer oul' fella always sang when he was jarred at a hooley (The Feckin' Collection)

Humor & Entertainment

O'Dea, Donal

Humor

The O'Brien Press

New edition of this bestselling and laugh out loud humour title. The almost incomprehensible wit and wonder of Irish slang words. Can you tell your bowsies from your gougers from your gurriers? No? Well, it's time to stop acting the maggot and find out, courtesy of this invaluable reference book that's been donkey's years in the making, (only coddin'). It's absolutely jammers with nouns, verbs and sayings that didn't quite make the Oxford Dictionary, including a few manky ones that are guaranteed to leave some oul' wans and Holy Joes completely morto.On the other hand, slappers and sleeveens will be dying for a gawk. So, feck it, you just know this is one book any self-respecting cute hoor just can't do without …

The Book of Feckin' Irish Slang that's great craic for cute hoors and bowsies (The Feckin' Collection)

Literature & Fiction

Ah, Ireland. Renowned the world over for the great wealth of its cuisine. Sorry, that should have read 'the great wealth of its politicians'. But really, in Ireland you can't beat eating. Well, okay, you can -- there's drinking -- and of course, there's sex. So it's just as well that this book combines all three in a heady stew, with a gansey-load of uniquely Irish recipes you'll remember from your youth, along with some of Ireland's favourite ingredients of religion, politics and cynicism thrown in for good measure. Bon appetit! Or as they say in Termonfeckin, get that into yer gob, ye dirty little bowsie ye!

The Book of Luvely Irish Recipes yer ma useta make when you were a little gurrier (The Feckin' Collection)

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Regional & International

Ever dreamt of cutting dead some annoying fecker in the pub with a razor-sharp witticism? Ever imagined bringing your boss down to size with a turn of phrase that cuts the ground from under him? And wouldn't you just love to open your door to a smugly grinning politician and wipe the smile off his face with a remark so pointed it stabs him through his empty heart?The good news is that all those Irish masters of the spoken and written word -- Wilde, Behan, Shaw and many more -- have done it for you. They've a stinging or witty quotation for virtually every occasion and they are all contained within. All you have to do is take the words out of the master's mouths …

The Book of Deadly Irish Quotations some smart fecker in the pub is always blatherin' on about (The Feckin' Collection)

As a serious study of the nuances of the English language as spoken in Ireland, this book is as useful as tits on a bull. On the other hand, if you'd like to have a baldy of understanding the various expressions you regularly hear around Ireland, you'd have to be a few brassers short of a whorehouse to ignore it. So stall the ball there! Whether you're a fine doorful of a woman or you're so hungry you'd eat an oul' wan's arse through a blackthorn bush, this invaluable collection of Ireland's most treasured (and irreverent) sayings is definitely worth having a gander at.

The Book of Feckin' Irish Sayings For When You Go On The Batter With A Shower of Savages (The Feckin' Collection)

There's been a rule of thumb in Ireland the last thousand years - if it's something you enjoy, it's a sin. And if it's anything to do with SEX, it's a mortal sin. Here, in one uncensored package, is everything you've ever wanted to know about sex and love in Ireland but were afraid to ask for fear of a clatter on the ear - Abstinence, Confession, Clingfilm, Croke Park, the Ballybunion Bachelor Festival ... what more could you ask? Find out who shouldn't have, but did; why there were lots of 'fallen women' but no 'fallen men'; and the extreme measures taken to stop us thinking about our wobbly bits and return to singing about the Famine.

The Feckin' Book of Irish Sex and Love that's not fit for dacent people's eyes (The Feckin' Collection)

Dufour Editions

Stop the lights! It's the one you've been gummin' for the second book of Feckin' Irish Slang that'll stop you losing the head when listening to the guff that passes for English among the quare hawks and gurriers, jackeens and bogtrotters of Ireland. Whether you're a chancer or a doss artist, a heifer or a nice bit of talent, this one's definitely worth a dekko. It has a rake of words and expressions that are absolutely mighty. It might give a beamer to a bishop but it's guaranteed to put a savage smile on your puss even if you're scuttered. So what are you waiting for? It would be a mortaller to miss out...

The 2nd Book of Feckin' Irish Slang that'll make a holy show of the first one (The Feckin' Collection)

OʼBrien Press

Hey you! Yeah, you holding this book, you with the face like a constipated greyhound. You're the sap in the family tree. Wouldn't know your langer from your thumb except for the nail. Word is if brains were taxed you'd be due a rebate. But why stand there and be insulted? With the help of this invaluable collection of Irish insults, you'll be able to tell your boss that for someone without cows he produces an awful lot of bullsh*t. Or your husband he's as useful as a concrete currach.

The Feckin' Book of Irish Insults: For Gobdaws As Thick As Manure and Only Half As Useful (The Feckin' Collection)

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Books by Murphy, Colin