A UML Pattern Language (Software Engineering) [Paperback]

Paul Evitts (Author)

Book Description

Series: Software Engineering | Publication Date: February 10, 2000

A UML Pattern Language pairs the software design pattern concept with the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to offer a tool set for software professionals practicing both system modeling and software development. This book provides: a collection of patterns in the domain of system modeling, including those that are useful to management, operations, and deployment teams, as well as to software developers; a survey of the development of patterns and the UML; a discussion of the underlying theory of the patterns and instructions for using the language; a thorough exploration of the design process and model-driven development. A UML Pattern Language recognizes that design and modeling have become equal partners with programming and coding in the enterprise of software development. Providing both an understanding of the work of design and the way patterns and the UML combine to facilitate design.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A UML Pattern Language pairs the software design pattern concept with the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to offer a tool set for software professionals practicing both system modeling and software development. This book provides: a collection of patterns in the domain of system modeling, including those that are useful to management, operations, and deployment teams, as well as to software developers; a survey of the development of patterns and the UML; a discussion of the underlying theory of the patterns and instructions for using the language; a thorough exploration of the design process and model-driven development. A UML Pattern Language recognizes that design and modeling have become equal partners with programming and coding in the enterprise of software development. Providing both an understanding of the work of design and the way patterns and the UML combine to facilitate design.

About the Author

Paul Evitts is a systems and management consultant from Toronto, and he is the President of neoLogistiks, Inc. He has more than 20 years of experience in systems integration, technology planning and implementation, and software methodology/lifecycle development. Paul's clients have included dozens of private sector and government organizations across North America, including insurance and manufacturing companies, real estate and retail organizations, educational institutions, and financial sector firms.

Over the last 10 years, Paul has successfully crafted custom use-case driven development approaches for clients, acted as business architect and project manager for individual projects, and provided strategic planning support for clients migrating to new technologies.

His consulting activities have not been limited to traditional applications development and system integration. He has also evaluated business opportunities for systems technology in the Third World (Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean), acted as technical producer for a commercial CD-ROM published by The Voyager Company, assisted a startup multimedia media company in business planning, and worked as a system architect for one of the significant successes in business re-engineering.

Paul's methodology consulting practice has not been limited to object-oriented development. He spent many years in the 1980s providing clients with Rapid Application Development and event-based development approaches, coaching and mentoring modeling using a variety of CASE tools.

Before getting into Information Technology, Paul was involved in community development and the use of emerging technologies to promote social change. As a socio-economic consultant, he was an early part of the Inuit Land Claims effort in the Canadian Arctic, which recently culminated in the establishment of a new Canadian Territory called Nunavut. Paul helped the Inuit use video and other media in the process of initial consensus-building across the North, and he provided advice on housing and community planning. His first exposure to the ideas of Christopher Alexander came about earlier as a result of work with a legalized squatting community in London, England—where he was involved in the cooperative rehabilitation of abandoned neighborhoods.

Paul studied community development, politics, and advanced technology at Rochdale College in Toronto. Rochdale is an experimental educational community that he helped establish. It is an alternative to traditional universities. His experiences at Rochdale were recently made into a very popular television documentary in Canada, which aired a number of times by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and is available as a video from the National Film Board of Canada. Please refer to Paul's Web site, http://www.umlpatterns.com, for further materials related to this book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sams (February 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157870118X
• ISBN-13: 978-1578701186
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,766,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hard material, April 3, 2000

By 

J. Chong (Dallas TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A UML Pattern Language (Software Engineering) (Paperback)

This book starts as very legible and even enjoyable prose. However, when the author gets into the real material it is pretty hard to follow for somebody who does not have a great background in OOAD, patterns and UML. This is not a beginners book. However, try reading it, since it is very good material.

Be aware, however, of very technical sentences like: "Containment and visibility are key characteristics of model elements in packages. Packages encapsulate the model elements htey contain and define their visibility as private, protected, or public." Certainly for somebody with a good understanding of OOAD can discern what is going on, but you will find that many, maybe too many, are written in this way.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shoemaker's Son, March 13, 2001

By 

R. Williams "code slubber" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A UML Pattern Language (Software Engineering) (Paperback)

It is with astonishment that I marveled at the degree to which this book was just a hodge podge of widely divergent ideas, thrown together under a moniker that is only really apt for a small portion of what is here. That said, I give it four stars because amidst the mess, there are some really good ideas, and also, this is one of the more literate books I've come across (meaning that the author is drawing on a wide range of other books and for the most part, intelligently condensing some of the ideas that run through them).

In the same way that it amazes me that Rational presumes to tell developers how they should develop software while their own software is a buggered up mess of different pieces that don't work well together (and companies a fraction of their size are now competing with them favorably), it is a little surprising to see how poor the organization of this book is and how many times you see a subject in a chapter or section heading and expect a serious drive, but end up with another little chip shot. The last chapter of the book (putting the pieces together [A for originality]) is almost a joke, but endemic: the author just summarizes the work of another guy, making a couple little points and quoting liberally. Methinks he was huffing and puffing by this point in his little journey.

If you are buying this for the 'patterns' be forewarned: a. there are precious few of them, and b. as is so often the case, everything down to a design tip qualifies as a pattern in this guy's mind. 'Seven Plus or Minus Two' is one of his patterns. It basically means people are only capable of keeping between 5 and 9 concepts in play at once. Ok, good thing to stress, but is this a pattern?

In reality, this book is good for one thing primarily: spurring you to consider some things that you probably had not considered before. For instance, there is a good discussion of the difference between business modeling and domain modeling, that considers also the role of vision in modeling (which is rare), and overall that is very useful. The chapter on Product (focusing design on product more so than on just managing tasks) started out very promising and ended up being just a couple of ideas. If you are a person who looks to a book to just turn over practical, useable nuggets and get out of the way, this one is not for you.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the 5 best computer science books I have ever read., August 17, 2000

By 

Suzanne Lauer "smlauer" (Marietta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A UML Pattern Language (Software Engineering) (Paperback)

This is a spectacularly interesting and useful book. No, it's not for beginners, but some of us already know something about patterns, OO, and UML, and we need advanced material to go even further. This book may be primarily aimed at designers, architects, and managers, but in my mind every software engineer worth that title should find the discussions in this book thrilling. Organized around the design pattern paradigm, each topic is short and pithy; so much so that often, after reading one, I have to stop and go apply the lesson to my product, project, or organization. I loved this book.