Understanding UML: The Developer's Guide (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) (Paperback)

by Mark Watson (Author) "This book is for those who want a simple introduction to the use of an object-oriented (OO) methodology..." (more)
Key Phrases: ideal object models, infrastructure classes, implementation diagrams, Object Architect, Popkin Software, Harmon Associates (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
It's rare that a computing book seizes on a wide range of emerging technologies and presents them in just the right detail. Understanding UML does just that, focusing on the latest and greatest in the use of object-oriented design and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and detailing how to use Java to implement a sales database on the Web.

The authors begin with an outline of the software engineering cycle. They escort the reader through the jargon of a typical software project, including an introduction to object modeling and the basics of today's iterative software development cycle. Harmon and Watson describe the basic document types in the UML notation. The authors also feature a quick overview of Java and an introduction to computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools and diagrams, which are useful in Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). (The authors choose Popkin's Software's SA/Object Architect as their CASE tool of choice here.)

The heart of the book is a case study of a hypothetical Web sales database for a small company, covering the project from analysis and design to implementation in code. This guide does a good job of presenting the fundamentals of UML and object-oriented modeling with enough detail to keep those who are averse to software engineering happy. Relevant source code (in Java) is included so you can see some of the finished product in this exceptionally balanced and informative text. While not comprehensive, this guide is all you need to get started with UML.

Review
"Â…(an) exceptionally balanced and informative text."
—Rich Dragan -- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 367 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558604650
• ISBN-13: 978-1558604650
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,617,326 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Yet another superficial design book, November 1, 1999

By	Aarti Shah (DC, US) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While this book goes further than most other OO design books I've read, it still falls well short of answering the elusive question - How the hell do I apply all this to my real life large scale applications? Most authors conveniently ignore the very existence of the GUI and focus on the easy part - the business classes. At least this books acknowledges the role of infrastructure classes and does give a few tips on when to introduce infrastructure classes in the analysis/design process. Fact is, in most business applications over 60% of the coding and maintenance effort is spent on the GUI and infrastructure (the How-To of an application). The authors too seems to agree that the nuts-and-bolt design takes up the most time in OO development process. In spite of this, less than 10% of the book is devoted to design. In fact, fleshing out the detailed design is left to the reader. The book does not even provide a complete class diagram for the simple example application.

Surprisingly, the authors suggest that developing the user interface could be done outside UML design! That means that the painstakingly developed models are useless when it comes to generating code! If I can't model all the classes in my application, round-trip engineering, as promised by many a UML tool vendors, becomes a pipe dream and the whole UML iterative development methodology falls flat on it's face. Very disappointing.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More Beginning OO than UML..., March 18, 1999

By A Customer

My rating is based on the comparison of the book's title to its content. I was expecting an advanced book on the UML for the seasoned developer based on the title.

What I got was a beginner's introduction to OO develelopment. In fact, the authors state on page 293 in the Afterword:

We've tried to keep this book simple. [...] If this book helps you get a feel for OO development and makes it possible for you to generate diagrams [...], we've done what we set out to do.

Don't be tricked me into purchasing the book by the misleading title. UML is discussed, but not in depth. If you're new to OO development, this book may be a good introduction. It also gives a fairly good introduction to the UML.

But a better book for just an introduction to UML is:

UML Distilled: applying the standard object modeling language by Martin Fowler with Kendall Scott

And for a more in-depth book, I liked:

The Unified Modeling Language User Guide by the three amigos

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poorly Written, March 26, 1998

By	Rita Nygren "rita498" (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews

While I'm sure the authors knew exactly what they were talking about, they did a truly poor effort of communicating the subject to the audience. Case in point: they spend the first 5 or so chapters mostly talking about what they will cover later on in the book or how a different topic (like Java) pertains to UML - and they'll talk more about it later. Few diagrams or examples were available, and those present aren't explained terribly well.