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Rating: 
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: As does SDL itself, this book tries to be too many things to too many people, and ends up being woefully shallow. It would better have separated "object-oriented" concepts from the SDL language itself, instead of interleaving the two in a tangle of tedious examples, missing details and a basically useless reference index. It might also have addressed the pitfalls of SDL and how they are treated in 'the real world', i.e., by patching in "C". As it is, it conveys the concept that SDL is useful for building academic models using a nifty block diagram editor. I could have gleaned this from the Telelogic sales brochure, thus saving myself 40 bucks or so.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: As does SDL itself, this book tries to be too many things to too many people, and ends up being woefully shallow. It would better have separated "object-oriented" concepts from the SDL language itself, instead of interleaving the two in a tangle of tedious examples, missing details and a basically useless reference index. It might also have addressed the pitfalls of SDL and how they are treated in 'the real world', i.e., by patching in "C". As it is, it conveys the concept that SDL is useful for building academic models using a nifty block diagram editor. I could have gleaned this from the Telelogic sales brochure, thus saving myself 40 bucks or so.
Rating: 
Summary: Comments from author of alternative
Review: I am the author of a more recent book on SDL (92-96-2000): "SDL Illustrated - Visually design executable models". "SDL: Formal Object-Oriented Language for Communicating Systems" contains some interesting parts, but they are complexified by examples in textual SDL (everybody uses the graphical SDL form provided by tools). Also, the book lacks a bit of homogeneity (the 3 authors should have collaborated more). Apart my book, a better book is "Systems Engineering Using SDL-92" by Rick Reed and al, but it seems to be out of print. Therefore, of course, my book is the best available.
Rating:
Summary: Comments from author of alternative
Review: I am the author of a more recent book on SDL (92-96-2000): "SDL Illustrated - Visually design executable models". "SDL: Formal Object-Oriented Language for Communicating Systems" contains some interesting parts, but they are complexified by examples in textual SDL (everybody uses the graphical SDL form provided by tools). Also, the book lacks a bit of homogeneity (the 3 authors should have collaborated more). Apart my book, a better book is "Systems Engineering Using SDL-92" by Rick Reed and al, but it seems to be out of print. Therefore, of course, my book is the best available.
Rating:
Summary: Former SDL instructor reviews the green book
Review: I used to work for Telelogic. One of my duties was teaching SDL classes. I taught the Intro SDL class and the SDL CAdvanced Code generation class. I am totally thumbs down on this book. It's on the level of one of those horrid unreadable academic books your professor sticks you with during your undergrad years. Only a guy with PhD could ever love a book like this. I'm sorry, but researchers just can't write books unless the last name is Tannenbaum. The book is so bad, I was almost ashamed of distributing it during class. I tried reading through it, but I gave up once I got halfway through. IMHO, the Telelogic Intro SDL class is far more understandable. Unfortunately, there is no book I can recommend that would do justice to the merits of SDL. A lot of people just say you should read the ITU-T Z.100 SDL language standard. Eck. If you just have a general interest in SDL, ask Telelogic for a 3-way handshake demo. The actual demo lasts 30 minutes. Alternatively, you can ask me directly if I have anything available in my SDL documentation projects. BTW, I no longer work for Telelogic. As of this writing, I'm working for Cadence Design Systems.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so hot.
Review: The blurb on the back of this book states that it "meets the urgent need for a comprehensive introduction to SDL...". Unfortunately, it stops at providing an introduction to SDL and for readers wishing to go deeper (anyone specifying or developing software with SDL, for instance) will quickly be frustrated by the superficial treatment which the subject matter is dealt with. Two stars - because it did at least provide an introduction.
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