Customer Reviews

Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I ordered this book in hopes of gaining an understanding of the "analysis documents defined by the UML 1.4 standard." However, because this book is so poorly organized and written, I had no confidence after a couple of chapters that I would gain anything from it.

As a person in the technical training realm, this book has little in the way of educational value. Why? Well, its examples are not practical or "usable" in any sense. They are poorly explained and and often do not provide enough information to relate them to the discussion leading up to the example. For example, what is the <<include>> tag in the use cases in the first case study? Good luck finding it. I had hoped the case-study at the end of the book would help. However, the case-study jumps right into use cases without a decent explanation of the problem. Another gripe, which is all too common with books written by technical, but non educational, people is that topics will be introduced with some sort of a list (like the project requirements in the first case study) and then the following sub-headings that are meant to drill down into each item in the list don't match up with the items in the list. Overall, if you are looking for a book with good practical UML/OOAD information, look elsewhere.

Previous reviewers must have failed Mr Haigh's course, because it is tough. Yes the book strays from OOAD. However in the context of his course Software Engineering, it fits. The book covers topics never taught to us in other courses, but it has become an invaluable reference since graduating. I believe that since my graduating Mr Haigh's course has become compulsory, which I believe says it all.

With such great people writing books in this topic, such as Craig Larman, Martin Fowler, Ward Cunningham, Robert C. Martin and Alistair Cockburn, why would anyone buy this book? Students who are forced to take Mr. Haigh class, that's who. Even they report that no one actually reads it (Mr Haigh teaches a Software Engineering course, which is not as bad as his book, at CUNY). "I use it to hold my monitor up and it only cost me 50 cents" one student told me.

Here are some reasons why you should stay away from this horrendous book:

- Every book out there on OOAD is better than this one. (see Craig Larman's book)
- There are just too many errors.
- Disorganized
- Nothing is explained well enough to make good use to if
- It appears the author does not know much UML (He is a typical programmer but he is no engineer)
- Many of the UML examples are wrong. (perhaps he should read more on the subject)
- Irrelevant topics are discussed. (One chapter talks about how to use make, another on how to use a debugger, and another on porting C++ applications. Furthermore, none of these chapters are actually good. A book on OOAD I don't think so)
- Does not even touch the tip of the iceberg that is OOAD
- The case studies are pathetic.
- It is clear that Mr haigh is just an average programmer who borrowed a couple of notes from Cockburn, Gamma and others (It clearly shows) for his 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th chapter and in the other chapters he just put a couple of man pages, then came up with some awful examples, put all the material together and called it Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. (First chapters seem to be just notes stapled together from different sources)
- No patterns, principles, and not much OOAD. (some patterns are discussed but they are not mentioned as such. He mentions them more as, "hey here's a neat trick I read, use it at your own risk since I don't really understand it myself")
- The only people who gave this book more than a star was Mr. Haigh himself. He even used two accounts (the second was probably his wife's who edited the book I believe) in order to put up 2 reviews in his favor. He put 5 stars twice boosting his rating. Now there's a professional.

Reasons you should buy this book:

- Its only 50 cents, used that is. I wouldn't pay anything more than that for a new copy.
- You want to see an example of a really bad book.
That's it.

one of the worst. Dont waste your money on this when there are other great books on this subject. Anyone who said this was a good book has obviously never read any other of its type

a book, that is poorly written and organized. dont buy it if you are trying to get something out of it.it is just waste of your money.

Ok, yes I am a developer and now that I am using this book to teach several courses on the subject, yes I would reorganise the book. Having said that the content is all there, except Use Cases, they are a basis for several book on their own, so I left them for additional reading.
This book is focussed on new developers and exposes the reader to all aspects of application development - analysis and design using UML and the takes the reader into other subjects such as testing, porting and debugging; all of these topics have merit. As knowing what to code is equally as important as knowing how to code.

A must have for all serious developers.