| OverviewLearning UML introduces the Unified
Modeling Language and leads you through an orderly progress
towards mastery of the language. Throughout this book,
author Sinan Si Alhir maintains a clear focus on UML the
language and avoids getting caught up in the cobwebs of
methodology. His presentation is direct and to-the-point.
Each chapter ends with a set of exercises that you can use
to test your growing knowledge of UML and its concepts. Editorial ReviewsBook DescriptionSince the dawn of computing, software designers and developers have searched for ways to describe the systems they worked so hard to create. Flowcharts enabled the concise documentation of program-flow and algorithms. Entity-relationship diagrams enabled database designers to convey the structure underlying the collection of tables and columns that made up a schema. From the beginning, technologists recognized the descriptive power inherent in visual representations of a system, yet it wasn't until 1997 that the first attempt to create a visual language that could be used across all aspects of a system development project came to fruition. Unified Modeling Language (UML) was born. UML has taken the software development industry by storm. Widely supported by development and documentation tools, UML can be used on the one hand by programmers to record such things as the detailed design of classes in an object-oriented system and on the other hand by business analysts to give the broad-brush picture of how a system interacts with users and other systems. UML has become the lingua franca of software development, and no one in the software industry can afford to be without knowledge of this powerfully expressive visual language. Learning UML introduces UML and places it in perspective, then leads you through an orderly progress towards mastery of the language. You'll begin by learning how UML is used to model the structure of a system. Many key UML concepts, especially that of the general (classes) versus the specific (objects), are illustrated in the chapter on class and object diagrams. Next, you'll learn how to use use-case diagrams to model the functionality of a system. Finally, you'll see how component and deployment diagrams are used to model the way in which a system is deployed in a physical environment. Structural modeling answers the "who" and "what" questions of systems development. Behavioral modeling addresses the questions of "when," "how," and "why." You'll learn how to use sequence and collaboration, to model the interaction over time between system components, how to use state diagrams to describe the life cycle of system components, and how to use activity diagrams to document control-flow and responsibility. Throughout this book, author Sinan Si Alhir maintains a clear focus on UML the language and avoids getting caught up in the cobwebs of methodology. His presentation is direct and to-the-point. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises that you can use to test your growing knowledge of UML and its concepts. As you work your way through the book, you'll find yourself warming up to the simple yet expressive language that is UML, and using it to communicate effectively and professionally about all aspects of system design. |
Other Readers Also Read | Top Sellers in This Category | Browse Similar Topics | | | Top Level Categories:Sub-Categories: | | | | |
Reader Reviews From Amazon (Ranked by 'Helpfulness') Average Customer Rating: based on 8 reviews. Best introductory book to UML I found., 2006-02-27 Reviewer rating: I had read several introductions and tutorials on UML off the 'Net. I also had plowed thru 3 chapters of UML Distilled with no "light bulb" going off. I just wasn't getting the correct perspective, I kept thinking, 'yeah. so?' I think I was getting too much information on how to use them and not enough first principles and a structure to think within. I finally turned to this book as the next attempt and hit paydirt. I recommend this to pure newbies, particularly if you floundered in other references as I did.
It does seem very simplistic at first and the repetition in the building of the concepts can be boring, but I wouldn't have changed it. It seemed to me what was necessary. I did read it in chapter chunks about 1/day. I wouldn't recommending reading it all at once. I think a non-newbie would not find this book highly useful. I'm not sure it's something I'll go back to again and again, but I feel a lot more ready to go back to the other books.
I don't think too much hit me at once or was confused by changing the diagrams over and over again. Worked just fine for me. Gave me a sense of continuity and relationship on how the various drawing types give the different perspectives of a project.
I had a project in mind I wanted to work with and as I went thru the book I did little drawings of my own. I would recommend that you do that as well as you go thru this book.
I liked having the solutions to excersizes in the back that I could immediately verify whether I was on the right track or not. | terrible waste of time, 2004-06-17 Reviewer rating: It's not that there isn't good information in this book, it just that you'll waste alot of your (presumably valuable) time getting it! You'll find yourself doing a lot of skimming just to find the crucial points of a paragraph or chapter. Buy UML Distilled by Martin Fowler instead. Excellent book. | Must have UML book, 2004-06-12 Reviewer rating: I believe this is a must have UML book, very clear, very useful as an introductory book and reference book, also has excercises with answers if you want to practice. | Highly recommended, 2004-01-08 Reviewer rating: Review As more and more development takes place in the object-oriented application world, there is a need to be able to describe these systems in such a way that everyone involved can understand. This spans everyone from the end-user who has to describe what they do to the analyst who has to write the specs, to the developer who has to build the application, and even the tester who has to very that the system works as designed. The Unified Modeling Language, or UML for short, is the way that is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for these descriptions. And the author has done a good job in writing a book that will help you start to understand and use these concepts. The book starts with an introduction to the language, along with what it is trying to accomplish. The use of written language as a metaphor for UML works well, as it breaks down UML into component parts, making it much easier to grasp. Differentiation is made between structural modeling and behavior modeling. Structure modeling deals primarily with the, what else, structure of the system. This includes classes, objects, use cases, and component diagrams. These concepts should be familiar to the object-oriented developer, and the information in the book does a good job in covering the subjects in depth. The behavioral modeling is used to show how the application should interact with the user(s) of the system, be they people or other system components. This includes sequence, state, and activity diagrams. These functions allow a user of the system to understand how everything relates together. When coupled together, you have a complete system to describe an application from all perspectives. I think the author did a great job in walking the line between a too-simplistic approach which doesn't teach enough, and a highly academic approach which is too difficult to understand for a beginner. There are exercises at the end of each chapter to help you apply the concepts and start to integrate the learning into your everyday experience. When finished with this book, you should be familiar with nearly all the concepts of UML, and should also feel comfortable when you start to use it for real-life modeling. For the typical Lotus Notes/Domino developer, you may well be thinking, "I don't need all this "stuff". After all, you've been building applications without it so far without it, right? Well, I would suggest that you need to alter your thoughts a little. For one, using a structured modeling approach on larger systems will lead to a better, more solid design as opposed to an ad-hoc "build as you go" approach. You can also use the behavioral structure to show and demonstrate the user's perspective of the system, as well as how the different processes of the system work together. And secondly, as you move into the world of Java and object-oriented systems, you will encounter the use of UML on a frequent basis. Now would be a good time to start learning it so that there is one less thing to learn later on. Conclusion
If you've not had any exposure to UML (or if it's been very light), I highly recommend getting this book and working through it. The time you spend now learning this information will pay off down the road with better up-front system design, as well as gaining the ability to explain your design and application operation to others. I know that as I move deeper into the world of object-oriented design and analysis, this book will be referred to very often. | Good introductory book, 2003-12-08 Reviewer rating: Learning UML is O'Reilly's entry-level book into the world of UML. It is a good introduction to UML modeling concepts and diagrams. Rather than overwhelm the reader with various types of diagrams, the book takes the approach that UML diagrams consist of "words" (symbols) that make up "sentences" (diagrams). This is an effective technique, as it teaches the reader to understand how one small symbol can affect the overall meaning of the diagram. One of the things I really like about this book is how it builds from simple to complex examples. This is done in such a way that the reader can quickly understand the more complex example, which is useful in understand many real-world UML diagrams. |
Some information above was provided using data from Amazon.com. View at Amazon > |
| |
|
|
