Customer Reviews

The Complete UML Training Course

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Abstract: The "Complete UML Course" is just two books (the "UML User's Guide" and the "UML Reference Manual"), along with voice annotations of the diagrams in the first book, and a few other rather buggy features. There is little in the way of a video course, never mind an "interactive cyber-classroom".

Voice annotations: Each one of the two hundred annotations must be started manually, and the little window that is popped must be closed again after the sound bite is finished. The voice just describes the diagrams in the book (often laboriously starting out "Figure two dash twenty-seven...", etc.). The descriptions are either simplistic and repetitive, or too short when complex diagrams are presented. Several of them have mistakes (like calling a "transition" a "transaction", etc).

Contents: Of course the contents are good: it is just an online version of two good books. But online books are called just that, not "interactive cyber-classrooms" (Unless you've just completed a course in the "Unified MARKETING Language"! :-)

Exams: The "Assessment" section contains many major mistakes. It will flag about 5-15% of the answers as incorrect, then refer you to a chapter in the book which shows they are wrong! (e.g. "What are the Building Blocks of the UML", or saying that stereotypes can have their own "stereotypes" instead of "icons", etc.). Other bugs include the "Classes" exam that refuses to display (so you get 0% for that exam!), missing or swapped diagrams, etc.

Conclusion: Buy the paper copies of the books, study them the good old-fashioned way, and save your money.

Cheers! Stefan Jetchick Software Engineer stefanj@sympatico.ca

The pompously called "cyber classroom" is just the basic books on UML by the same authors in hypertext format with some tests at the end of each chapter. The voice describing some of the figures doesn't add anything to their understanding and is utterly boring. As a livelier way to get into UML, this Training Course is a failure; unfortunately this is an example of how an interactive "cyber course" should not be done. My advice is - buy the books, read them at your own pace, keeping in mind that however precise they are also terse and totally non-pedagogical (ok, they are User's and Reference Manuals...). And let's hope that a true training course on UML will show up one of these days.

This product is basically a chapter by chapter monotone narration of the UML user guide that it is based on. It advertises a multimedia experience, when in reality it is a bunch of poorly written HTML pages with some animated slides. The animated slides consist of regurgitation, almost to the letter, of the text surrounding the slides you would have already read before hitting the play button to run the slide.

The practice tests were frustrating to say the least. They were riddled with: incorrect answers to questions, bugs (The wrong diagrams come up in some cases), annoying navigation and poor design. Probobly the worst design flaw was with its handling of incorrect answer feedback. When you got an incorrect answer, it was not specific as to why it was incorrect. It just linked you to the chapter where the topic is discussed. It is ironic that a class that is supposed to teach a tool for doing proper design/requirements gathering/use case creation etc. is so poorly designed from a user experience perspective. This looks like it was put together by a college student for a class.

Another flaw in this package is the fact that my virus protection software (Norton Anti Virus 2002) finds a virus every time I try to take the course (Called win95.corrupt). After closer examination of the contents in the box, there is a flyer stating that they are aware of this issue, and not to worry about it, there is no virus. They hint that there was once a virus, but they removed it. I guess its signature is still in the product but it is dormant. I have been purchasing software for 14 years and never have I seen a product present itself this way. Of the hundreds of software packages I have purchased in my career, never have I seen one with these symptoms.

So my final recommendation is to stay away from this course. It is boring, poorly written and a complete waste of money!!

I returned this product for a full refund.

Some of the concepts in UML are vague to say the least and I looked forward to an easy ramp up of my understanding by whom better than the author(s) themselves. I'm unsure why this failed to happen - either the authors do not wish to impart their deep knowledge of their language to the wider community, they don't possess the language skills to do this or worst of all behind UML the authors are far from unified and still arguing or are unsure about the semantics of their own language. There is nothing in this book you can not get a better handle on from free tutorials and papers on the net.

i rushed to buy this so call training course. It is just the electronic copies of the 2 books that i have already bought. Who care if the so call video/audio on the CD... they are just reproduction of the diagrams from the printed book.

This is a horrible example of a training course. I have no IDEA why IBM recommended it for the 486 test. Unless you prefer reading info online, the CD is useless. The quizzes at the end of the chapters are subpar. You only can hit a button to see the answer after you answer every question. If you get the answer wrong it just directs you to the section of the reading - there is no explanation. You cannot go back to a previous question. The movies are just someone reading the text with a picture of the diagrams already included in the text. Dont waste your time. Get the Craig Larman or Martin Fowler books instead.

I have only gone through 8 of the 32 exams and have already found at least 10 errors. Don't waste your time or your money.

I was very disappointed by this product and am taking it back to the bookstore for a refund.

Of course it's a showstopper that the software doesn't function at all. As another reviewer pointed out, that's the whole point of buying this course and not just a book. But on a deeper level, you'd think a course about a software engineering "best practice" would actually WORK!

Obviously the software on the course CD was _NOT_ developed using best practices.

This "Ultimate Cyber Classroom" brought back those days in college where the instructor droned on and on using very precise language whose words had only meaning within the context of the class. (Why couldn't they use the word 'hidden' rather than 'elided'? Same number of characters...)

Be fair warned that the reading level of this course is over that of most people.

This would have been a far better course if it had spent more time on the why's and how's rather than almost totally on syntax.

This book do not stand to reputation of UML creators. I bought it because it has been recommended by IBM for their UML test. Now, I want to sell it fast. Any takers?