Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET [Paperback]

Andrew Filev (Author), Tony Loton (Author), Kevin McNeish (Author), Ben Schoellmann (Author), John Slater (Author), Chaur G. Wu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 17, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0764543768 | ISBN-13: 978-0764543760 | Edition: 1

What is this book about?

If you want to use Visio to create enterprise software, this is the book for you.

The integration of Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect and Visio for Enterprise Architects provides a formidable tool. Visio offers powerful diagramming capabilities, including such things as creating UML models, mapping out databases with Entity Relationship diagrams, and aiding the development of distributed systems. Its integration with Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect means that C# or Visual Basic .NET code can be generated from the UML diagrams, and Visual Studio .NET projects can be reverse engineered to UML models.

For the developer already familiar with UML and looking to get the best out of Visio, the Visual Studio .NET and Visio for Enterprise Architects combination is weakly documented, and the quality information needed to realize the time-saving features of Visio just does not seem to be available, until now.

This book presumes that you are already familiar with the basic concepts of UML notation — this book will not teach you UML. Instead, this book will take you forward into the Visio environment, showing you how to make the most of its software related features.

What does this book cover?

In this book, you'll learn how to

• Diagram business components in Visio
• Generate code from a UML model
• Reverse engineer Visual Studio .NET projects into a UML model
• Reverse engineer into a UML model without source code
• Document the project with UML and Visio
• Design distributed applications with Visio's diagrams
• Work with Entity Relationship database modeling, and round-trip engineering for database design

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

If you want to use Visio for Enterprise Architects to quickly design and create enterprise software, this is the book for you.

The integration of Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect and Visio for Enterprise Architects is a formidable combination. Visio offers powerful diagramming capabilities, including such things as creating UML models, mapping out and generating databases, and aiding the development of distributed systems. Visio’s integration with Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect means that C# or Visual Basic® .NET code can be generated from UML diagrams, thus giving your projects a significant kick-start, and Visual Studio .NET projects can also be reverse engineered to UML models.

This book will finally help you make the most of Visio’s time- and labor-saving features, and unleash Visio’s power for your enterprise development.

To use this book you must be comfortable with the basic concepts of UML.

What you will learn from this book

• Diagramming business components in Visio
• Generating code from UML models
• Reverse engineering Visual Studio .NET projects into UML models, with or without source code
• Documenting projects with UML and Visio
• Designing distributed applications with Visio diagrams
• Using Object-Role Modeling and round-trip engineering for database design

"This book will definitely help any developer wishing to get a jump-start on using Visio for Enterprise Architects in their traditional development process. The book meshes traditional UML knowledge with .NET development model specifics, resulting in a deep understanding of how Visio for Enterprise Architects can speed up software design and development time."
—Andrew Krowczyk, Senior Software Developer, Zurich North America

About the Author

Andrew Filev is President of dotSITE Software. This company specializes in cost-effective development on the .NET platform. Andrew's team has been developing commercial solutions using .NET since the first public announcement of this new Microsoft strategy. Andrew set up one of the first .NET portals, and has held a number of seminars and lectures dedicated to .NET in state and private companies.
Andrew has implemented numerous solutions in various high-tech fields – Web Services, ERP applications, medical systems, development frameworks, among others. He can be reached at [e-mail] or www.dotsitesoftware.com.

Tony Loton works through his company LOTONtech Limited (http://www.lotontech.com) as an independent consultant, course instructor, and technical writer. The current area of interest at LOTONtech is the enhancement of UML visual modeling tools – specifically Rational Rose and Visio for Enterprise Architects – to facilitate .NET application design. Further details can be found at http://www.lotontech.com/visualmodeling.
Tony graduated in 1991 with a BSc. Hons. degree in Compute r Science and Management and he currently holds an appointment as associate lecturer with the Open University in the UK.

Kevin McNeish is President of Oak Leaf Enterprises, a company that specializes in object-oriented developer tools, training, and software. He started his programming career twenty years ago working with Assembly Language, then moved to C, Visual FoxPro, and currently uses C# as his primary .NET development tool. He authored the book .NET for Visual FoxPro Developers and teaches both .NET and UML training classes in North America and Europe.
He has also written UML articles for CoDe, FoxPro Advisor, and FoxTalk magazines. Kevin, a Microsoft MVP, is the creator of a .NET business application framework called "The Mere Mortals Framework for .NET". He also mentors software companies in a variety of vertical markets to design and build component-based applications that scale from the desktop to the Internet. He can be reached at [e-mail] or www.oakleafsd.com.

Benjamin Schoellmann credits his move to sunny Houston, Texas, with providing the inspiration necessary to pursue a development and writing career. Currently he is involved with evangelizing .NET technologies among his coworkers at Synhrgy HR Technologies. Among his favored activities are golfing, tinkering with his network, talking incessantly, and integrating hardware and software solutions, primarily home automation, to enhance his leisurely pursuit of Slack. He maintains several content-free WEB domains, including Benjammin.com. He is obsessive about keeping pace with emerging technologies, and is very quick to credit his developer friends with all his success in the IT field.

John Slateris a project manager at Management Reports International in Cleveland, OH. At MRI he is currently developing applications for the property management industry. Right now, he is working on several projects using .NET development tools and .NET Enterprise servers.
In his free time John enjoys outdoor activities and playing with his children Rachel and Nathan. He can be reached at [e-mail].

Chaur G. Wu currently works for Trend Micro Inc. as a senior software engineer. He started software programming before was old enough to qualify for a driving license. The first program he wrote was a bingo game – in assembly code on a 8051 single chip. To capitalize on the program, he ran a small casino in the lab – he developed primitive game boxes that connected his pals and allowed them to place bets.
He's also been involved in much larger projects. For example, he developed a program in C++ to simulate the movement and geographical coverage of GPS satellites. As a research assistant in his graduate study, he implemented a wavelet-based video compression algorithm for a traffic surveillance system sponsored by Boston City Department of Transportation. He also helped solve a blurred image problem using inverse filters and other image processing algorithms for a client who designs fiber optics components in San Jose, CA.
His technical interests include distributed software systems in Java, COM, and .NET, generative programming, software design, and neural networks. Outside of work, his favorite vacation combines a one-night gambling trip to Reno followed by a day of skiing at some resort near Lake Tahoe. You can e-mail Chaur at [e-mail].

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (December 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764543768
• ISBN-13: 978-0764543760
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,044,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars You're in for much confusion, December 25, 2003

By 

Milan Negovan (NY, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET (Paperback)

In the best... excuse me---worst tradition of WROX this book is yet another example of incoherent fragments and inconsistent writing. The reason I broke my rule and bought a WROX book is because there's hardly any (if any at all) decent documentation on Visio and it's *real-world* applications by and for developers. No, this book is not a complete waste of money, but it could be a thousand times better. Read on.

The funnies thing about this book is that right from the outset one of the authors promises that the book would cover *one* and only one real-world solution as opposed to other books who feed you different examples all the time. I read this book from cover to cover and yet... every chapter laid out a different example! ? Note to authors: can you guys at least talk to each other? Let along sync up content.

As far as editing goes... Was there editing done at all? You'll see a number of annoying typos and strange grammatical errors. I also found errors in a few diagrams which is worse than typos.

Chapter 1 starts off with a brief introduction and overview of UML and its basic concepts. It's neither comprehensive or clear enough for beginners, nor is it useful for those who are not new to UML.

Chapter 2 is a nice "tour of Visio" even though they messed up a couple of diagrams so don't count on their accuracy. Very much for beginners.

Chapter 3, "Diagramming Business Objects" is worth the money you paid for this book.

Chapter 6, "Documenting the Project" is totally out of place. It goes back to the basic UML diagram, and whoever wrote this chapter, drew the diagrams in a pretty unorthodox way. A bizarre chapter to say the least.

Chapter 8 is another reason you might want to own a copy of this book. It presents a short yet informative introduction to ORM, creating a database from a model and reverse engineering an existing one.

To sum it up, two stars for the effort and *some* useful content. To those who wrote Chapters 3 and 8 thank you. Other than that---a very sloppy job by WROX yet once again. Not worth the money at all. Get it from bookpook.com for much less or download for free from Usenet.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the time..., December 23, 2002

By 

Andrew Krowczyk (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET (Paperback)

I don't know about you, but as a developer I've always wanted a book that covered the Visio modeling tool in a way that would help me be more productive in my work. With .NET and the release of the Visio for Enterprise Architects edition this desire for a comprehensive book covering Visio's use and *fit* within the .NET Enterprise Development suite has never been greater. I think Wrox has hit the nail on the head with the book offering, and believe that it will greatly help any developers looking to get an edge in developing with Visio & .NET. I know that it's been of great use to me in my development projects!

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Did the authors of this book communicate with each other??, September 21, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET (Paperback)

The book starts out ok, and at first you are told that the examples in this book will all be related to the same business so that the reader can understand the progression. The author also boasts that this book unlike most others will use references to the same business model for the entire book. Yeah Right!! Then the next chapter, most likely written by a different author starts using a completely different business model for his examples. Every other chapter continues to change the business model in order to present the subject matter. Not only is this very confusing, but sometimes the authors refer to parts of the book that don't even exist. Its like parts of the book were accidentally left out. Arrrrr!!! Then to top it all off there are tons of spelling and grammatical errors that could have been caught by simple proofreading. The solution to this problem, and I hope someone at Wrox is reading, is to not have more then one author write the book. Wrox does this all the time with their books. That's why most of their books suck! I should have learned my lesson the last time I read a Wrox book, but the only reason I bought this one is because there is nothing else available on the subject matter. And can you believe that they have a cover price of $59.99 for this garbage. I am never buying another Wrox book again.