UML Explained

Rating:
Summary: Needs more substance
Review: Consider other books if you want to seriously learn UML or OO Analysis/design. A good design notation like UML should be intuitive and is better explained with examples. By reducing or avoiding examples as suggested by the author, the book is left with almost nothing.

Rating:
Summary: Clear explanations of key concepts
Review: I bought this book on the spur of the moment. I was impressed with Kendall Scott's clear writing style and the good examples. I also liked the introduction. It explains UML in the context of the unified process, with reference to architectural views.

This book is probably not all you want to know about UML. But it is a good, light-weight reference to the portions of UML you'll use most. It explains the what, when, and how.

Mr Scott will like me as well - I own 3 other books he has co-authored. The Fowler book (UML Distilled) covers the same ground, but it is more dense, with fewer examples. What is nice is that the examples in this book builds upon the examples of the second Rosenberg book. See my reviews on the Rosenberg books elsewhere. (Use case driven object modeling with UML).

Rating:
Summary: The only UML book that's readable
Review: I have the UML User Guide, UML Distilled and this book. I got this book the last, and I only wished I had it as my first UML book! The other UML books are very technical, dry and boring. They package two much information in two few words. Sometimes I feel like I have to read each sentence several times to figure out what they are trying to say. Don't get me wrong, I am no novice OO (object-oriented) programmer: I have more than five years of industrial experience with OO programming (that's not including my experience with these languages in college and graduate school) and I have two industry-recognized certifications. Also I have use Rational Rose (if you are looking at this review, you should know that it is for). However, I never finished reading the other two books as I always either got bored or frustrated after reading a few pages. I knew most of the concepts in UML, yet I still felt that some concepts were still somewhat fuzzy to me and that's why I bought this book.

Reading this book, on the other hand, is a breeze. It is like reading Harry Potter (OK, maybe I am exaggerating a little bit). Once I picked it up, I just couldn't put it down. It is very concise (just 129 pages), but covers almost all the important areas of UML. It defines every term (there are so many of them in UML!) in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. Yet, it is not dry or boring: it uses a real-life example throughout the book to make all the terms easy to grasp. I finished reading the book in less than a week. Now I feel much more comfortable with UML, and I will certainly keep this book as a reference. This is simply the best UML out there, as I said, I only wished I read this book first so I wouldn't waste all those hours in frustration and boredom.

Rating:
Summary: Clear, Concise, and easy to understand
Review: I m a beginning of UML and found UML Explained clear, concise, and easy to understand.

This is not heavy into UML, around 100 pages, but it can give readers a good introduction to UML.

Instead of boring you of the syntax, Kendal provides an overview of UML and then reinforce your understanding by walking you through the process with examples.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, a good refresher book
Review: I'm surprised at some of the lower reviews this book got. I read this book in an afternoon because I found it was a good refresher on UML for me. The target audience for this book is the non-technical person, and I feel that this book hit the mark pretty well. The explanations given for the models right on and coincided well with the example Book Store the author was using as the development example. I also liked that fact that the book did not bog the user down with any development language preferences.

A few things keep me from giving the book a 5 star review. First, did not like the fact that Objects and Classes were covered before Use Cases. While this is not the first time I have seen that in a book, to a new comer into the UML world, this can be misleading. The second gripe I have is that while the distinction between a class and an object is one of the stronger ones I have seen in a book, I did not feel the definition for Objects clear enough for a beginner. Other than that I felt that this book was definitely well written and would help a non-technical beginner get introduced to UML.

Rating:
Summary: An explanation that everyone can understand
Review: It is now reasonable to say that knowledge of the Unified Modeling Language or UML is an occupational requirement for software designers at all levels. While there are seemingly countless books that describe how it is used, the number that really explain it are few. This is one of them. With no assumptions regarding prior knowledge in object-oriented principles or the UML, you start with the definition of what a software system is. The next step is the description of the life-cycle of software development, where generalized diagrams are used. Objects and the UML notation to describe them do not appear until chapter three. Brevity in the description is a benefit here. It is reminiscent of the old television cliché, "Just the facts." In only a few short pages, you are brought up to speed on what a software system is as well as the fundamentals of an object and the UML notation to represent them. My experiences in teaching object-oriented programming (OOP) is that students have no trouble with the concepts at all. The difficulty always arises when they attempt to convert it into code, not the initial obvious examples, but the nontrivial real-world ones where design decisions must be made. Therefore, the decision to be brief about objects is the correct one. Use cases are described as the actions carried out by the actors in the system. As no pre-existing knowledge of use cases is assumed, the level here is that of introduction. Once again, the author is right on the mark. The basics of use cases are given, without the unnecessary overhead of a complex system. In my experience with students, the concept of the actions of actors is easily understood, provided it is presented by itself. To use them, it is necessary to have a complex system to model, however explaining them requires only the simplest of examples. After the background of the structures has been covered, the next step is to describe the changes in their state over time. The standard diagrams of flows and state transition are presented using the basic model of a customer login to a web site. Nothing fancy, just the basics needed to get the point across. The final chapters deal with how the parts are put together to make a viable entity. No object is an island unto itself, so the basics of collaboration diagrams show you how to combine your pieces so that they will work and play well together. Learning the UML is like all other complex structures. First it must be explained and then you can learn to use it. The point of this book is to do the explanation part and leave the use to others. In that area it is a complete success and I consider it as one of the top six technical books of the year.

Rating:
Summary: Needs more substance
Review: This book starts pretty well, but then you realize that it won't really take you anywhere. He abuses the use of "references to previous and future chapters" over and over, many of them are absurd, it almost seems that he had no material and wanted to "fill" the page.
He does use a language that is "readable" to people with no computer background, but that is exactly were is going to leave you: with no real UML background.
If you are looking for quicker and solid results check out "Sams: Teach yourself UML in 24 hours", I normally don't by any "short cut" book meaning "24 hours!", but the way this book was written is an excellent way to provide a good background, foundation, hands-on, technical and practical use of the UML. If you don't have an Object Oriented Design background, this books gives you a good start on it as well.

Rating:
Summary: Unintelligible for the most part
Review: Unless you're intimately familiar with the software development process, look elsewhere for an explanation of UML. The author's writing style is much too abstract, leaving the reader wondering what he is talking about much of the time - a major waste of time. Time and again he introduces unfamiliar terms, then "explains" them in yet more unfamiliar terms which are meaningless to those of us "outside" UML.