Foreword

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is one of the biggest success stories in the information technology (IT) industry. Once used solely as a way to sketch the possible requirements or operations of an IT system, UML is now used in a variety of ways by people with very different backgrounds; for example, by

• business planners, as a language to specify the planned operation of a business process, perhaps in concert with a business process language such as the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN).

• consumer device engineers, as a way to outline the requirements for an embedded device and the way it is to be used by an end user.

• software architects, as an overall design for a major stand-alone software product.

• IT professionals, as an agreed-on set of models to integrate existing applications.

• database professionals, to manage the integration of databases into a data warehouse, perhaps in concert with a data warehousing language such as the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM).

• software developers, as a way to develop systems that are flexible in the face of changing business requirements and implementation infrastructure.

These are just a few examples of how UML is used; there are many more. Since the creation of the UML standard in 1997, the language has even been extended into a full systems engineering language (SysML) to solve the integrated development problems of systems development professionals.

Clearly, there’s some utility and expressibility in a language that has many dozens of implementations, both open-source and closed, and that has found its way into every major (and most not-so-major) integrated development environment. That’s not enough for a language to be successful, however; an entire ecosystem is needed to make a standard like UML successful. One needs to be able to find, train, and evaluate modeling professionals to know that one’s projects will actually be carried out on time, on budget, and within other constraints. This means that change must be instilled in the IT organization.

It’s wonderful that the UML standard and related standards (e.g., the Meta Object Facility, MOF, and XML Metadata Interchange, XMI) allow tools to share models and diagrams; this means that developers can choose and easily implement their own tool chains, integrating the right reverse-engineering tool with the right model display tool with the right code generator. But all this technical infrastructure is pointless unless the human dimension is covered too. Development teams that rely on UML, from the business analysts to the architects to the systems analysts to the programmers, must learn to speak the lingo.

The OMG’s standards specifications (found at http://www.omg.org/) define the norms, but more is needed to ensure team builders that they are hiring, building, and delivering quality to their internal and external customers. In 2003, the Object Management Group teamed up with the UML Technology Institute to deal with this issue; they developed the OMG-Certified UML Professional (OCUP) program. The OCUP program defines UML expertise at three professional levels (Fundamental, Intermediate, and Advanced) and tests ability against those measures in a fair, unbiased, worldwide testing program. The OCUP UML Intermediate test taken in Bangalore is equivalent to the OCUP UML Intermediate test taken in Paris; passing that test clearly marks the test-taker as a leader in the field—someone who understands the need for expertise in modeling and who has taken the time and effort to improve his or her development expertise.

This ground-breaking book is focused on preparing you to pass the OCUP Fundamental and Intermediate tests. This allows you to show yourself, your peers, and your employer that you understand the value of modeling to the creation of quality systems that are delivered faster, better, and cheaper. The authors of this tome have proved their mettle not only by passing both tests themselves but also by teaching UML expertise in classroom and conference settings that has led to remarkably high OCUP test-passing rates.

You have taken the right first step to prepare yourself to show what you know; and this book will help you pass the tests and earn the certification!

Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Object Management Group, Inc.