Java Modeling In Color With UML: Enterprise Components and Process (Textbook Binding)

~ (Author), Eric Lefebvre (Author), Jeff De Luca (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Java Modeling in Color with UML--printed in color--provides four UML "archetypes" for common entities in business modeling. These have rather abstract names like the moment-interval. Each archetype is assigned a different color in UML. The book uses these four archetypes to model 61 domain-specific business components for manufacturing (including suppliers and inventory control), facilities management, sales, employees, and organizations, plus accounting and document management.

Similar in spirit to software-design patterns, these UML components are catalogued with short prose descriptions and illustrated with UML. The detail here is often impressive, though the type is necessarily small. (Fortunately, the CD-ROM contains all these diagrams--including Java source code--for use within your own designs.) The authors--all experts in UML--have done the heavy lifting here. The idea is to incorporate these components within your own projects.

Besides a catalog of expert components, this book describes the authors' Feature-Driven Development (FDD) software-design process. (While there is one UML standard, design processes still proliferate.) FDD touts good productivity with a minimum of overhead. The authors argue that it can be used productively within today's ever-shorter business cycles.

In all, this book features much more than just color-enhanced UML. It provides a foundation of UML (and Java classes on the CD-ROM) that can model most business problems. If you design with UML, you can surely benefit from this intelligent and visually savvy text. --Richard Dragan

Review

"I went for a job interview. The interviewer asked me to model a payroll system and gave me an hour to work it out while he observed. So I built a model using pink moment-intervals, yellow roles, green things, and blue descriptions-classes, attributes, links, methods, interactions. After 25 minutes the interviewer stopped me, saying I had already gone well beyond what others struggle to do in a full hour! So my recommendation is: read this book! It's made a better modeler out of me and I'm sure it will do the same for you." -- David Anderson, Modeler and Designer

"This book brings a new dimension to the effective use of the UML, by showing you how to apply archetypes in color to enrich the content of your models." -- Grady Booch, Chief Scientist, Rational Software Corporation

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Product Details

• Textbook Binding: 221 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (June 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 013011510X
• ISBN-13: 978-0130115102
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #73,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't Be Fooled, September 25, 2000

By	R. Williams "code slubber" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The people who trashed this book didn't do much with it, that's clear. When you first go to the book (or if you've seen Coad speak, as I did @ JavaOne), you will think that Mr. Rogers is trying to talk you into teaching you a new way to program w/crayons. I was also struck by the proliferation of classes that Coad advocates. However, I have returned to this book a number of times, in part because Coad's tool Together/J is now the preeminent Java/UML tool, it makes Rational look like a set of tinker toys. This last time, I've become quite enamored with what is going on in here. Here are my suggestions: 1. Really try and understand the DNC (domain neutral component). It is a very good approach to a kind of design completeness theorem that I haven't seen much talk about elsewhere. 2. Look at the diagrams. I look at them over and over again. After going a couple of rounds I found that I was becoming addicted to the visualization process, not merely as a representational apparatus, but as a way of actually doing more work/understanding the work I'd already done.

If you get the 30 day eval of Together/J and you work through understanding the DNC and color, you'll pass into another dimension from which you will not readily want to return. Plain white UML is dimensionless to me now.

All that said, I gave the book a 4 because it really needs an update. The FDD (feature driven development) methodology is not really interesting or appropriate anymore, I think. In the new massively interconnected, distributed component world, features are not what its about anymore, unless you're developing a word processor. Also, the archetypes are based on a non-EJB approach that will change if distributed computing is applied to it, quite significantly. Still this is an important book and combined w/TogetherSoft's tool it's perhaps the best design/UML teaching combo available. There aren't enough books out there that have models for real things in them. This does that and a lot more.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep, August 4, 1999

By A Customer

This book is strange in that I can understand the poor ratings it has got and the good ratings. It is like 3 books in one with the middle book being the meat of it. The first book is one chapter on the color and archetypes. This work is fascinating and takes modeling to a new level. Just being introduced to this idea is worthy of 5 stars. The last book is one chapter on process. The ideas presented here are also fascinating, but like the color chapter, it is one chapter only and requires a few reads for it all to sink in. The material and ideas presented are really deep, but are well worth the effort to understand and then learn. This really feels like breakthrough work. The middle chapters are numerous models for different domains using the color and archetypes from chapter one. This is like reference material.

This book is at least 3 books in one. If you are a serious modeler or process person, you must have this book. If you are one of the many who just get by in computing, you'll not understand it and write a very negative review.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A partial Rosseta stone and many many Tablets, May 17, 2000

By	Jon Paugh (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have read many books on OO design and analysis. I have a good theory of how to do OO O&D, but I have not always applied it well. And I have seen very few example of actual systems that were OO and well thought out. What I lack, and what I think many other developers lack, is practice, or examples of good work that can be emulated. I bought this book because I saw it was full of examples that go into great detail.

Unfortunately, I had trouble understanding how the examples were created and whether the results were effective in the real world. Reading the first chapter was like reading the Rosetta stone and it sort of explained what followed. But it wasn't enough! I was left as the archeologist of some very exotic, very interesting sequence diagrams. I had many many questions about how the design was done and for what reasons the authors created certain classes. There were many examples and many of the designs were very surprizing to me (especially the many classes that were "verbal" and the usage of many apparently redundant objects).

After reading this book I am left with as many questions as answers. Is that good or bad? Either way, it was an interesting read. Sadly, I have to give this book 3 starts because though it tantilized me with new ideas, it didn't communicate them to me. It just showed them to me and demanded that I accept them. I need the rest of the Rosetta stone please!