ACCU Reviews: The Unified Modelling Language User Guide

	[Home Page] - [Reviews Main]

Book Review

The Unified Modelling Language User Guide by Booch & Rumbaugh & Jacobson
Recommended

ISBN: ???? Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pages: ?pp Price: £30-00

Categories: object oriented modelling languages

Reviewed by Richard Blundell in C Vu 11-3 (Mar 1999)

This is the brand new hardback book from the authors of the UML discussing the latest version of the standard (it is supposed to be based on UML 1.3, due out in a few weeks time in January 1999). The material is therefore pretty authoritative and up-to-date and the typo count is quite low for a first edition (although I did find one or two slips in the text and figures) The book is in seven sections with three short appendices. The first section is a brief introduction to modelling, the UML and an application of the various UML diagrams to a Java 'Hello World' program. Sections two and three cover basic and advanced structural modelling (classes, objects, interfaces, packages, etc.). Sections four and five are on basic and advanced behavioural modelling (use cases, interactions, state machines, threads). Section six covers architectural issues such as components, deployment, patterns and frameworks and the last section is just a short 'where to go from here' chapter.

There is a good level of coverage, including explanations of most of the standard stereotypes and tagged values defined in UML 1.3 and examples of many idioms of usage. Most of the main chapters are broken down into standard sections - Getting Started, Terms and Concepts, Common Modelling Techniques, and Hints and Tips. Each chapter begins with a parable about house-design, doghouse construction or office blocks and ties it in to software engineering. There is some good advice scattered amongst the last three sections of each chapter, although this is definitely a UML guide rather than a general design guide.

I did not always find the grouping of information within chapters completely consistent - the four sections of each chapter did not seem to have so much focus that you could always tell which section you were reading. Also, the downside of having these standard chapter sections is that the contents pages are fairly useless - each chapter and chapter-section are listed with page numbers, but the table of contents does not give much detail (other than the chapter title) to show what material each chapter contains. This makes it impossible to browse the book via the contents pages and it would have been nice if the 'concepts covered' boxes at the start of each chapter could have been listed in the TOC well. Also, in one or two places the advice seemed to be a little strained (for an example, the labouring of the advice on pp 100-101 concerning the hiding of each type of modelling element if not relevant to the current diagram).

My only criticisms are fairly trivial, however. This is a book that many people will find very useful (and rightly so) and I am sure I shall consult my copy frequently.

Other Authors with the same surname

Booch
Best of Booch by Grady Booch [Recommended] (Reviewed Jan 1998)
Object Solutions - Managing the Object-Oriented Project by Grady Booch [Recommended] (Reviewed Jul 1996)
Object Solutions by Grady Booch [Highly Recommended] (Reviewed May 1996)
Object-Oriented Design, with Applications by Grady Booch [Highly Recommended] (Reviewed May 1991)
Unified Modelling Language Reference Manual, The by Booch & Jacobson & Rumbaugh [Recommended] (Reviewed May 1999)

Jacobson
Information Design by Robert Jacobson (Reviewed Jan 2000)
Object-Oriented Software Engineering (revised 4th reprint) by Ivar Jacobson [Recommended] (Reviewed Sep 1994)
Object-Oriented Software Engineering by Ivar Jacobson [Recommended with Reservations] (Reviewed Jan 1993)
Software Reuse by Ivar Jacobson (Reviewed Jan 1998)
Unified Modelling Language Reference Manual, The by Booch & Jacobson & Rumbaugh [Recommended] (Reviewed May 1999)
Unified Software Development Process, The by Jacobson [Recommended] (Reviewed Sep 1999)

Rumbaugh
OMT Insights by Dr James Rumbaugh [Highly Recommended] (Reviewed May 1998)
Object-Oriented Modeling and Design, by Rumbaugh
Unified Modelling Language Reference Manual, The by Booch & Jacobson & Rumbaugh [Recommended] (Reviewed May 1999)

Last Update - 13 May 2001.

To link to this review, please use the URL: http://www.accu.org/bookreviews/public/reviews/u/u001860.htm
Copyright © The Association of C & C++ Users 1998-2000. All rights reserved.
Mirrored from http://www.accu.org/