Book Review - UML 2.0 In Action
Category Book Reviews
UML can be a rather daunting subject if you try and look at the entire thing at once. But if you can distill down the items that are used most often, it becomes much more manageable. That's the goal of Packt Publishing's book UML 2.0 In Action - A Project Based Tutorial by Patrick Grassle, Henriette Baumann, and Philippe Baumann.
Contents: Introduction; Basic Principles and Background; Modeling Business Systems; Modeling IT Systems; Modeling for System Integration; Index
UML 2.0 In Action takes the position that UML is like an iceberg... The stuff you use most often is the smaller portion that shows above the surface. So rather than try and write a 1000 page comprehensive tome on the subject, they take the essential portions most often used by real-life developers and weave them into a case study example. The "UML Airport" is used to show UML techniques such as Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, Package Diagrams, and Statechart Diagrams. The writing style is more conversational than what I'm normally used to seeing in a book on UML. Also, there isn't as much emphasis on explaining every last nuance on how a diagram can be drawn to handle every last exception you'll come across.
I can see where this book would be a good introduction text to UML. I would probably follow it up with a more comprehensive title of some type, one that documents all the nuances. While this one will get you off to a good start, you could find yourself in a situation where UML as practiced at your organization may have a few more twists than this one covers. Still, UML 2.0 In Action will have you understanding much more (and much more quickly) than you might otherwise figure out...
UML can be a rather daunting subject if you try and look at the entire thing at once. But if you can distill down the items that are used most often, it becomes much more manageable. That's the goal of Packt Publishing's book UML 2.0 In Action - A Project Based Tutorial by Patrick Grassle, Henriette Baumann, and Philippe Baumann.
Contents: Introduction; Basic Principles and Background; Modeling Business Systems; Modeling IT Systems; Modeling for System Integration; Index
UML 2.0 In Action takes the position that UML is like an iceberg... The stuff you use most often is the smaller portion that shows above the surface. So rather than try and write a 1000 page comprehensive tome on the subject, they take the essential portions most often used by real-life developers and weave them into a case study example. The "UML Airport" is used to show UML techniques such as Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, Package Diagrams, and Statechart Diagrams. The writing style is more conversational than what I'm normally used to seeing in a book on UML. Also, there isn't as much emphasis on explaining every last nuance on how a diagram can be drawn to handle every last exception you'll come across.
I can see where this book would be a good introduction text to UML. I would probably follow it up with a more comprehensive title of some type, one that documents all the nuances. While this one will get you off to a good start, you could find yourself in a situation where UML as practiced at your organization may have a few more twists than this one covers. Still, UML 2.0 In Action will have you understanding much more (and much more quickly) than you might otherwise figure out...
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