Customer Reviews

VB6 UML Design and Development

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Object Oriented development can be difficult at the best of times. When your doing it using a Not-Quite-OO language like VB (which is otherwise excellent) then those frustrations can be doubled. I found this an excellent book for bridging the gap between the two (OO and NQOO). Many useful tips can be picked up by skimming through the book but - given the complexity of many of the examples - the book is best worked through in detail. Having the limitations of VB explained in a positive way has certainly improved my coding and design.

My only complaint? Within weeks of getting this book my company consigned VB to the history books and climbed onto the Java bandwagon!

Vince.

OK, while some sections are difficult to read due to poor editing, this book is the only one on the market that will show you how to turn the user's ideas for a project into an actual physical design. The ideas in this book are sound. It may take some time to understand the code sample, but it is the best DNA code sample out there. Well worth the effort.

This book opens up a new standard for developing Visual Basic applications. For those who have searched for a clear, simple coherent way for successfully building Visual Applications, this book is for you. This book shows you how to properly design your applications using UML. There is an excellent code sample that will show you how to use the Microsoft alphabet soup, i.e. ADO, RDS, MTS, etc. It is also one of the few books that understands that DNA is not just building internet applications. DNA is a style of programming based on internet programming techniques, which can include a VB exe program like the example in the book. Excellent book!

The cover of the book says it will teach you how to build DNA based applications using ADO and MTS. I figured this would help me with my ASP work. However, Mr. Sturm builds a client-side application that relies upon RDS for the storage and manipulation of Recordsets. This doesn't help me to build DHTML or HTML based applications. I end up with state-based components that are not very useful for my ASP applications. No thanks. However, if you want to learn RDS features and capabilities this books sample application is pretty valuable.

The first 7 chapters are a good UML overview. The rest of the book on physical implementation gets rather confused and relies on quite a few strange method implementations by the author. Read Business Objects by Wrox instead

UML is one of those area that VB developers usually do not know. As a result, there is not that many books that are available compared to a subjet like XML (Wrox have 2 books with UML, while they have 10 books with XML in their title, not including the ones that talks about it).

Unfortunately (or is it?), UML is one of those knowledge that are simply a requirement to any enterprise development with good time to market and much better documentation and knowledge of an application. VB came to market as an easy tool and it is still like this. With time (and versions), VB is now capable of doing good scalable enterprise architecture but it also lacks the enterprise developers that the C area got.

This book will help change the tide in VB favor. First of all, this is UML book to learn from scratch what UML can provide and why is it important to use UML to have a successful application. Then, it will bring the UML to the VB world and see how UML will help the VB architect and developers in order to obtain that success.

Technically talking, the author brought case-studies with the book as well as a good technical background. This is a go-get book.

The development cycle starts with UML and this is a great book for helping to understand the UML process as it relates to VB. There are lots of books for C++, but few for VB and was happy to have one.

Below I stated how Jake's code was "a mess." This was based on having read four other Wrox books on COM and MTS. Granted, the code was less clearly described in VB6 UML than the others, but I stuck with it and found Jake's coding examples more useful and valuable than any of the other Wrox books I've read on the subject.

This book is a breath of fresh air in the world of VB. There are countless books telling you how to do various VB techniques, but this book introduces the VB programmer to serious project management and design utilizing Universal Modeling Language. This book is a must have for the experienced VB programmer that wants to start doing professional software engineering and design. It also takes you through a real world 3 tier app using ADO, RDS, and other techniques. I give this book an unequivical 5 star rating. (That means go get it right now!!)

This book was a complete disappointment. The editors did the author no favors. The numerous errors (both typographic and technical) greatly obscured the valid content the author attempted to provide. The sample code is simply dreadful.

If you buy this book, do not read it. Read "Instant UML" and "Visual Basic 6 Business Objects" (both from Wrox Press) instead.

Jake obvious knows UML and VB, but as other reviewers pointed out, the presentation of his code examples is a mess. While the code contains good form and helpful ideas, because there are several other similar Wrox books out there, you can better spend your $39.99 elsewhere. I'll take a look at Jake's new book on project management, but only after I make sure he's using a new editor.