Customer Reviews

Visual Modeling with IBM® Rational® Software Architect and UML™

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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

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...

It is almost the same book I have studied about the Rational Rose and UML from the same author. He lost the chance of to write something more inovate!!! But it still works!!!

Thanks to the reviewers who are Honest enough to write negative reviews when a book falls short of its hype or title. I have 100s (more like 1,000s?) of books on software engineering, project management et al and it is Incredible how many are So Bad, from blatant spelling mistakes, poor grammar, missing icons(!!!!), mis-labled icons and options in the instructions, and the Worst - the books that are basically Copies of the usually worthless online help shipped with most modern software (esp. stuff from REDMOND).
Also, it is extremely disheartening and embarassing (I'm a software project manager and SW engineering expert) that most vendors, esp. the Largest seem to NOT CARE about their customers - as evidenced by USELESS Online help that states the obvious and trivial and provides No Guidance on the Hard and mysterious stuff, Clumsy UIs that make a simple operation Way too complex, and Upgrades that redesign features that worked FINE in current versions and IGNORE long standing problems that impact users (and developers) productivity and acceptance of the product. And the Largest vendors seem to be the ones with the Worst track record of these SNAFUS.