For nearly ten years, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been the industry standard for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of a software-intensive system. As the de facto standard modeling language, the UML facilitates communication and reduces confusion among project stakeholders. The recent standardization of UML 2.0 has further extended the language's scope and viability. Its inherent expressiveness allows users to model everything from enterprise information systems and distributed Web-based applications to real-time embedded systems.

In this eagerly anticipated revision of the best-selling and definitive guide to the use of the UML, the creators of the language provide a tutorial to its core aspects in a two-color format designed to facilitate learning. Starting with an overview of the UML, the book explains the language gradually by introducing a few concepts and notations in each chapter. It also illustrates the application of the UML to complex modeling problems across a variety of application domains. The in-depth coverage and example-driven approach that made the first edition of The Unified Modeling Language User Guide an indispensable resource remain unchanged. However, content has been thoroughly updated to reflect changes to notation and usage required by UML 2.0.

Highlights include:

• A new chapter on components and internal structure, including significant new capabilities for building encapsulated designs

• New details and updated coverage of provided and required interfaces, collaborations, and UML profiles

• Additions and changes to discussions of sequence diagrams, activity diagrams, and more

• Coverage of many other changes introduced by the UML 2.0 specification

With this essential guide, you will quickly get up to speed on the latest features of the industry standard modeling language and be able to apply them to your next software project.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 82 Ratings

Misleading tutorial on UML 2.0 - 2006-02-26
Reviewer Rating:
I picked up this book as a way to familiarize myself with the changes to UML in UML 2.0, which are extensive, as I found the OMG specification nearly impenetrable. I had liked the first edition, though I too felt Fowler's Distilled was a much better intro to give to students and engineers learning UML for the first time. This edition, though, does not meet expectations. The typos and bad references throughout are bad enough. Join that with a complete lack of real-world design examples, poor organization, and poor design. Why a chapter on State Machines and a separate chapter on State Diagrams that repeats a lot of the earlier chapter? The blue cross references make it clear that the book is spaghetti design at its worst. Check out the table of contents, you won't know where to look for your favorite diagrams; check out the index, and you won't be able to find the definition of the concept you just can't quite remember. The glossary is useful, as the UML 2.0 spec dispensed with a glossary, making it even more impenetrable. On the other hand, the authors make no attempt to call out the new UML 2.0 features, which would have made my day. What I find most unforgivable, though, is the authors' inability to present the new UML as it really is: the book is seriously misleading in many ways for learning UML 2.0. My biggest peeve is the way they treat the new and highly useful composite structure diagrams. In the list of diagrams, they don't even mention it, calling it by the name of a different diagram, the "Component Diagram", which they feel is the same thing. They then separate the discussion of composite classes and components, making it seem as though they're totally unrelated. They fail to mention quite a few of the new UML features (the X navigation adornments that make non-navigability explicit, for example, which is critical to code generation, or the fact that you can have multiple stereotypes associated with model elements. In their defense, the UML standard isn't very clear on these diagram types, but this is a practical tutorial that should take practice into account. There are constant references to the Reference Guide for more advanced features; these are mostly the UML 2.0 features that they didn't feel were important enough to include in the comprehensive tutorial. The appendix on UML notation simply ignores many UML 2.0 notations. I can't help but feel shortchanged.

Waste of money. - 2007-01-03
Reviewer Rating:
Book is complete waste of money. Find more prevalent information online. Not really a required book. Not used at all.

Totally lost in the myriad of details - 2009-09-06
Reviewer Rating:
Reading this book is like being in a dense jungle where animals make noises around you but you don't see them. When you think you saw one it just disappears. It fails, at least for me, to show the path.

The information is structured in such a way that I don't know for sure if I exhausted a subject or not. The book tends to explore the uml concepts in isolation with some concrete examples and it fails to integrate them fluidly in the context or contexts where they apply. You have to leap through chapters back and forth to put the things together. Let's take class diagrams. Chapters 8 and 9 are dedicated to class diagrams but if you browse these chapters you see blue side nodes: stereotypes are discussed in chapter 6 (page 111), aggregation is discussed in chapters 5 & 10 (page 111), generalization is discussed in Chapters 5 and 10 etc. When you go to chapter 5 there are other references that point to chapter 15 and of course back to 8. You get the idea. By the time I finished chapters 8 & 9 I had a soup in my head with all the concepts floating in all directions trying to escape.

The chapters are not even ordered in a more natural order that is the order you'd approach a real life problem to model. It begins with structural modeling. In reality to get there you need to explore some of the behavioral aspects first.

I would also have liked to see more coding examples similar with the examples from the GOF book. It is always nice to see how some of these diagrams would translate in source code.

Sorry, I am not using UML directlly. I am using tools which supports UML. - 2008-03-21
Reviewer Rating:
When I am using tools supported UML, I often search key concept with this book. Because this book is an user guide.
I made some sequence charts, so I use some functions of UML.
I can not understand which architecture is good or not.
I think there are little idea about that.

Terrible book - don't waste your time & money - 2007-10-08
Reviewer Rating:
I don't know what people who would review this book well are thinking. These authors may be good at creating the UML, but terrible at explaining it. The sentences are packed with words they haven't explained - or uncommon uses of words that really have no meaning, unless you are already a UML expert. I can't imagine a more poorly written text.

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