Reviews for Using UML : Software Engineering With Objects and Components

1. One of the best books of my library

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, June 12rd, 2004

   The best book I've ever read on UML and I've seen a few ones: clear, understandable, distinguishing the most and least important concepts, as short as possible. The authors have been there, they look thoroughly the semantics of each concept introduced. I used "Using UML" to prepare very good slides on UML. It has been recommended to me by a Dutch university teacher and I realised that the book was used in lots of universities in the world. I can't thank him enough. A must read. I hope the authors will update it quickly on UML 2.0 ...

2. Fairly good but lacking in some areas

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, October 12st, 2003

   The first part of the book is geared up towards the student talking about bread-and-butter things like component design, OO concepts etc, this is ok but you won't read it twice.

   As a reference, the rest of the book covers the UML basics but not to any great depth, it can still leave you asking questions. Something like the UML User Guide is a better bet.

   Overall, its a good book to have as a reference, but I'm still looking for a better one. (This review is based on the 1.3 edition).

3. Suffocatingly dull presentation.

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2003

   I was wary of the 'average' reviews for this book, but it was recommended for a course module so...mistake! In the inept hands of these authors UML becomes 'Unremittingly Dull Language' - they plough into the field with no adequate ground-laying or overview, no concept of how the reader absorbs ideas, and definitely no humour! These are not people you'd want at your house party.
   The language is wooly, unneccesarily confusing and inspires such boredom that you just don't care what they're saying - there must be a better book than this!?

4. Very good introductry material to learn UML

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2002

   The original edition of the book was based on the UML 1.1 standard. The Object Management Group's UML Revision Task Force was charged with updating the language to deal with bugs and suggestions, and versions 1.3 and 1.4 of UML were released. The first three printings of the Updated Edition of the book were based on UML1.3; later printings are based on UML1.4 (which differs from UML1.3 only in very small ways, see below).
   The main changes between UML1.1 and UML1.3/4 are to the relations between use cases (Chapter 8). This is not surprising: as we discussed in the original Chapter 8, the original scheme (uses and extends relations between use cases) proved confusing, particularly because these relations were counterintuitively described as generalisation relationships. These relationships have been replaced by a "genuine" generalisation relationship, plus two stereotyped dependencies corresponding to the old stereotyped generalisations.

5. If you want to learn UML, buy a different book!

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2002

   As a software engineering student, I purchased this book to complete some of my final year assignments. We had to use a substantial amount of UML in the assignments and I knew very little about it.

   I found the book no use at all! It introduces the concepts surrounding object-orientated development, and skims over the different diagrams used in UML in a confusing manner.

   The book is not very long, and no way worth the price.