Customer Reviews

UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

If you start your study of the Unified Modeling Language(UML) by going to the definitive references by the three creators, it is quite likely that you will be intimidated. The three books, _The Unified Modeling Language User Guide_, _The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual_ and _The Unified Software Development Process_, all written by the designers and published by Addison-Wesley, are nearly 1500 pages of rather intense material. Like a veteran horseman, Martin Fowler charges to the rescue.
In a "mere" 174 pages, he takes each of the essential main areas of the UML and presents a brief, yet surprisingly thorough description of what it is and how it is used. While targeted at the UML novice, it is necessary to have a fairly solid background in object-oriented programming in order to understand it. Since the UML is a modeling language based heavily on diagrams, they are used throughout the book and are very effective.
This book will not teach you the UML, that task is left to weightier works. However, it will provide the proper foundation so that you can learn it, a task that is just as important. I listed the first edition as one of the best books of the year in my "On Books" column that appeared in the September, 1998 issue of _Journal of Object-Oriented Programming_ . There is nothing in the second edition that will change that opinion.

This book is probably best served as a quick tour or "best of" UML for someone already versed in OOAD concepts. It introduces each major topic, establishes clear definitions and examples, and incorporates the author's personal experiences. To this end, it is concise and effective.

However, it is not well suited for people trying to get up to speed with both OO and UML concepts, (which is my situation). I found "Fundamentals of Object-Oriented Design in UML" (Page-Jones) as a much more effective introduction OO and UML.

As I become more educated on the topic, I find myself reaching for Distilled more and more. It's great as a quick reference to clear up concepts.

I think this book is a must-have for any UML user, but should not be your first experience with OOAD.

I was assigned a problem recently in a C++ Advanced course that required me to quickly obtain exposure to the UML. I used Amazon to find this book. On month later I have read four books on the UML and have two more books waiting on my office shelf! I am extremely fascinated by the UML and recommend all software engineers look into its use. I highly recommend Martin Fowler's UML Distilled for engineers who have no previous modeling exposure. It is a fast way to get your feet wet and obtain a high-level overview. After reading this book you might consider the path I forged for myself:

1) UML Distilled by Martin Fowler 2) UML Toolkit by Hans-Erik Eriksson & Magnus Penker (* includes a CD-Rom with Rational Rose 4.0 demo). A great second book! You can also obtain a free UML Modeling tool by TogetherSoft.

3) The Unified Modeling Language User Guide by Booch, RumBaugh and Jacobson. A GREAT book and definite read, however I would not recommend it as your first if you are new to modeling (as I am). I was extremely impressed by Grady Booch's writing skill. He infused me with a love for modeling. (I also intend to read his other books.) As a parent I enjoyed his comments regarding teen age daughters in addition to the fine art of dog house construction.

4) Real-Time UML: Developing Efficient Objects for Embedded Systems by Bruce Powel Douglass. A SUPERB book! I am just finishing it. I was impressed with the author's extensive real-time knowledge and appreciative of his ability to communicate it so clearly to interested readers. I found his dry sense of humor entertaining and intend to look into the Dave Barry reference. I only wish I had time to immediately sit down and read his second real-time book "Doing Hard Time". It is however waiting on my office shelf.

Thanks to all the authors sited. Good luck to you on your discovery of the UML.

This review also appears in comp.object.

I must confess that I didn't know UML at all when I picked up this book. I just had this simple question in mind: What the heck is UML anyway? Now that I have finished reading it, I feel like to give the book a score of 90 out of 100 for the answer it provides.

Numbered in 180 or so pages, the book really is a feather-weight compared with its peers in the same series such as _The Unified Software Development Process_. With wide margins on both sides, texts are printed in bigger fonts than what we normally see in technical books. Adding the neatly drawn diagrams, and we have a book with tremendous visual appeal to a busy professional who, after a day's hard work with the computer, just wants to read something less intimidating and demanding than a reference manual while still catching up with the trend in technology. I am talking about myself here. In this regard, the book suits my need perfectly.

I particularly enjoy the author's sense of humor, notably in the light-hearted presentation of the brief history of UML, which is part of Chapter 1. Chapter 2, titled 'An Outline Development Process', serves as a road map to the chapters that follow. By outlining the development process in four major phases (inception, elaboration, construction and transition), the author not only brings up important components in UML such as 'use cases' and class diagram, but also offers a good deal of sound advices on software engineering based on his own experience, which I find invaluable.

One thing I am not completely satisfied with is the example used in Chapter 3 ('Use Cases'. The author makes a well-intent, but ill-planned, attempt to illustrate the concepts in use cases with a diagram of a financial trading system, which, however, is totally foreign to me. Although I can understand that people like to pick examples from their past work, I must disagree on the author's choice in this case. Another area that can be improved in the book is the diagrams, which I feel are simply thrown at my face in one piece -- mixed with annotation marks in some cases (e.g., the class diagram on p.50) -- to save the space, I assume. Novices like me would have a hard time telling the annotation marks apart from the diagram at the beginning. In addition, to make the diagrams easier to follow, complex ones such as the class diagram on p.50 might be better presented in several steps (e.g., first disassembled, then assembled together).

Copyright (C) 1999 by Huayong Yang.

I disappointed by this, the third edition of UML Distilled. The first edition of this book was clearly rushed out to meet the release of the UML specification and so contained many inaccuracies. However, this is now the third edition and it still has many problems.
The biggest issue is that the author has too many non-standard diagrams. These are helpfully labelled "non-normative", and are an odd mix of UML 1, UML 2 and some other bits and pieces that the author likes. Now what is the point of this? These diagrams won't be supported by UML 1 tools, or by UML 2 tools, so how is one to draw them? Also, the non-normative diagrams do not have a metamodel or any well-defined semantics, so even if one were to build a tool to support their syntax, their semantics would still be open to debate.
The next issue is that many of the UML 2 diagrams are syntactically incorrect (e.g. the use of dependencies rather than connectors in composite structures). Perhaps this is because the author was writing the book while the UML 2 specification was still being developed. Personally, I would rather he had waited a bit rather than give us something only partially baked.
The discussion of UML syntax implies that UML as a visual language is much less powerful and complete than it actually is. For example the very brief discussion of sequence diagrams misses out most of their important new features. You don't learn about combined fragments, references, gates or parameters (although some of these are mentioned in passing). Yet these are the things that make UML 2 sequence diagrams so much more powerful and useable than they were in UML 1. In fact, the sequence diagrams in this book look like they have been translated directly from UML 1 sequence diagrams without applying any of the new features.
The discussion of UML semantics is generally disappointing. UML 2 has tied UML semantics down very tightly - it has had to do this because of MDA. However, in this book you get the impression that much of it is still quite vague and open to interpretation - hence the "non-normative" diagrams.
On the whole, the level of detail is, in many cases, too low to be useful even in a "distilled presentation". For example, you get 2 pages on interaction overview diagrams, and in this you lean that the author hasn't really worked out how to use them effectively and doesn't really care for them anyway. Yet these diagrams are important. They give us, for the first time, the ability to string together isolated interactions into workflows in a precise way.
On the whole, I can't recommend this book. Try "UML 2 for Dummies" instead.

I have both 2nd and 3rd edition of UML Distilled. Compared to 2nd edition, 3rd edition has lots of Martin's experience sharing. This is not a bad thing. But for a beginner of UML, what he wants is to quickly understand UML instead of Martin's experience.

For example, Martin tells readers that you should focus more on text description other than UML use case. Also, for the other example, in Chapter 14 Component Diagrams, it is full of Martin's opinion about how to use Component Diagrams without telling readers what is the definion of Component Diagrams.

If you are a new beginner of UML, go back to buy 2nd edition. If you are the readers of 2nd edition and would like to know Martin's experience, then 3rd edition can be a better choice.

This is, in my opinion, an excellent book. It's short and sweet; it includes enough information to be useful without going off the deep end into territory of interest primarily to academics. This book emphasizes a refreshing, low-ceremony approach to software development. All the major aspects of UML are discussed: Use cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, collaboration diagrams, stereotypes, packages and collaborations, state diagrams... I found the concise explanation of the differences between association, aggregation and composition to be especially useful. At the end of the book the author also goes through a simple example using Java to show how to get from modelling to an actual piece of code. If you are a solid intermediate-level developer, this book is an invaluable stepping stone on the path toward mastery of object-oriented design techniques. It would probably be somewhat useful for a beginner, and would probably be rather too trivial for a sophisticated software designer.

Martin Fowler's UML Distilled surprised me as being a better read than The UML Users Guide by the three amigos. Martin Fowler manages to provide an overview of UML in a short book that actually has information lacking in bigger, more complete UML books. The definition of the three main perspectives of UML diagramming: Conceptual, Specification, and Implementation; as well as the better coverage of Activity Diagrams and advanced concepts and techniques normally not thought to be covered in an overview book, make this book the quickest way to get an overall feel and understanding of the UML.

This book is a really great introduction to UML if you already know some object oriented design (OOD).

If you have some experience in object oriented programming (C++, Java, Smalltalk) or have some experience with other OO design notations like OMT or Booch, then you will truly appreciate this book. The information is densely packed. The book provides an enjoyable quick tour of a reasonable complete UML notation.

The style of writing is informal and easy to read. This is a book that can be read from cover to cover in one day without getting exhausted.

This book is not an introductory book to object orientation (OO). If you haven't programmed in (object oriented) C++, Java or Smalltalk, then you should look for another book.

The book is also a great "quick" reference to UML. The text is organized so that it is easy to find any of the described topics. But, the book is not an exhaustive reference manual. There are quite a few details missing.

The price of the book is hight considering the low page count. On the other hand, it is worth much to have a book were you can find the information you need fast.

This is an excellent book for learning the essential concepts of UML. It will not teach you every single detail of UML or system design. But, it will give you everything you need to get going. I would recommend this as a first book for anybody studying UML who already has some object oriented experience. Then, as you spend more time with OO design, you may want more detailed books.