Visual Modeling with IBM® Rational® Software Architect and UML™ [Paperback]

Terry Quatrani (Author), Jim Palistrant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0321238087 | ISBN-13: 978-0321238085

“Terry’s style is always direct, approachable, and pragmatic. Abstraction is hard, and visualizing abstractions is as well, but here she’ll guide you in doing both using Rational Software Architect.”
—From the Foreword by Grady Booch, IBM Fellow

Master UML 2.0 Visual Modeling with IBM Rational Software Architect

Using IBM Rational Software Architect, you can unify all aspects of software design and development. It allows you to exploit new modeling language technology to architect systems more effectively and develop them more productively.

Now, two of IBM’s leading experts have written the definitive, start-to-finish guide to UML 2-based visual modeling with Rational Software Architect. You’ll learn hands-on, using a simplified case study that’s already helped thousands of professionals master analysis, design, and implementation with IBM Rational technologies.

Renowned UML expert Terry Quatrani and J2EE/SOA evangelist Jim Palistrant walk you through visualizing all facets of system architecture at every stage of the project lifecycle. Whether you’re an architect, developer, or project manager, you’ll discover how to leverage IBM Rational’s latest innovations to optimize any project.

Coverage includes

• Making the most of model-driven development with Rational Software Architect’s integrated design and development tools
• Understanding visual modeling: goals, techniques, language, and processes
• Beginning any visual modeling project: sound principles and best practices
• Capturing and documenting functional requirements with use case models
• Creating analysis models that begin to reveal your optimal system implementation
• Building design models that abstract your implementation model and source code
• Using implementation models to represent your system’s physical composition, from subsystems to executables and data
• Transforming these models to actual running code

The IBM Press developerWorks® Series is a unique undertaking in which print books and the Web are mutually supportive. The publications in this series are complemented by resources on the developerWorks Web site on ibm.com. Icons throughout the book alert the reader to these valuable resources.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Terry Quatrani, IBM Rational’s UML Evangelist, is responsible for training and transitioning Fortune 500 companies to object technology and for preaching the visual modeling gospel of Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson. She has spent twenty-one years developing and deploying large software systems. Formerly at GE, she was founding consultant for the Lockheed Martin Advanced Concepts Center.

Jim Palistrant, IBM Rational’s J2EE and SOA Evangelist, educates customers and the IBM field force about J2EE and SOA concepts and tools. A frequent speaker at technical conferences worldwide, he has worked with Java, J2EE, and Web technology since 1995.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: IBM Press (June 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321238087
• ISBN-13: 978-0321238085
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for the experienced UML modeler, June 23, 2006

By 

David W. Day - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Visual Modeling with IBM® Rational® Software Architect and UML™ (Paperback)

If you are just getting into UML modeling and you have IBM Rational Software Architect (RSA) to work with, this is probably a great book for you. However, most people using RSA probably wouldn't have spent the money on such a high-powered tool unless they already had a strong command of UML.

The book offers guidelines on how to set up RSA, which are valuable if you've never done it before. But that is the key: if you've done *anything* before with Rational Rose (or read the previous editions of this book), this will be a waste of time. And for $42??!! The price alone (given the price of other more useful technical books I've purchased recently) took my rating from 3 stars to 2.

We just upgraded to RSA from Rose, so we are trying to learn how to capitalize on RSA as quickly as we can. The best material I've found has been in white papers on IBM's site or the help documentation that comes with it. Had high expectations for this book based on the title, but found very few useful pieces of instruction/information.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not as useful as needed - but there isn't much of a choice, October 20, 2007

By 

Aryeh Polo Talnir "supreme design" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Visual Modeling with IBM® Rational® Software Architect and UML™ (Paperback)

In this Internet era, where some of us are impatient and want to
start doing things right away, this book falls very short of
fulfilling the (impatient's, that is *my*) needs. It is far
insufficient to name the buttons that I have to click to accomplish
some task, if after reading the instructions in the book I have
to go through the horrible software online help to find out what
the button is, where it is, how it looks. When the author says
"Click to select the Initial or the Activity Final icon from the
palette" (p.56, but I just opened the book to pick up one sentence,
any sentence) I *DO* expect, today, in 2007, to see the icon that
is mentioned. Anything less than that, renders the book almost
useless for me.

The depth and breath of the examples is very limited. Indeed, the
books seems utterly short in all regards. Both the UML and the
RSA software are so rich, that this book seems unfairly short for
either.

In short, the book barely serves as an ice-breaker, to remove
a little (very little) the fear of getting started with the new
software.

I would add, that the RSA online help doesn't shine either, but that
is the subject of a different critique (is there someone listening
in IBM-Rational?)

-Disappointed Aryeh

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There *is* an easier way to make all those UML diagrams..., August 20, 2006

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Visual Modeling with IBM® Rational® Software Architect and UML™ (Paperback)

We've adopted the RUP methodology at my place of employment, and I've been involved in a number of specification writing projects of late. This book made me want to dig a little deeper into the IBM tool offerings to automate much of what I'm trying to do manually... Visual Modeling with IBM Rational Software Architect and UML by Terry Quatrani and Jim Palistrant.

Contents: Introduction to Visual Modeling; Beginning a Project; The Use Case Model; The Analysis Model; The Design Model; Implementation Model; UML Model; Notation Summary; Index

Quatrani and Palistrant use the RSA tool to show how to develop RUP-style specifications in an automated, organized fashion. If you already have the basics of UML down, then it's quite easy to understand where they are going and how RSA can generate things like use case and sequence diagrams in such a way that they can be maintained and reused. For instance, I recently had to generate sequence diagrams for a particular technical specification assigned to me. With some "just in time" information and some charting software, I was able to hack together a semblance of what was required. But reading through this book, I realize that RSA could have guided me through the process, making sure the notation was accurate, that it conformed to UML standards, and that could be easily updated when the inevitable review required changes. While not an exhaustive reference guide to RSA or UML, there's enough here to jumpstart your learning and generate useful output while doing so. With the additional links back to the IBM developerWorks site, you should be set to start minimizing your pain when it comes to generating all those wonderful little diagrams that designers love (and coders detest)... :)

I'm not ready to turn in my coder's badge for life as a UML diagrammer, but with RSA and this book I think I might be able to start to bridge the two worlds...