Sams Teach Yourself UML in 24 Hours

by Joseph Schmuller

Book Overview

This introduction to Unified Modeling Language is intended for software developers and system or data architects at beginner to intermediate level. It provides contemporary and relevant examples,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0672322382
• ISBN13: 9780672322389
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Sams
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Good UML Introduction

This is a good introduction to the greatness of UML. I gets you up to speed quickly on what UML is, the various types of diagrams, and how to use UML in the real world. If you are looking for comprehensive coverage of the topic you will probably want to read some books by Martin Fowler and/or Scott Ambler next.

Author's Response to Larry4882

Thanks for taking the time to review my book. I've been working with UML professionally for more than 3 years, and my goal was to help beginners learn UML as quickly and painlessly as possible. I spent more than 3 months writing it and made every effort to make it accessible for beginners. Given the almost universally positive responses I've gotten from readers, I'm a little surprised you found so many problems with the book.That said, if I can improve the book, I'd very much like to do so. If you'd like to email your specific feedback to me at jschmuller@yahoo.com I'll be sure to address any errors as quickly as possible. Also, if you could let me know who you may have spoken to at my publisher, I'd appreciate that as well. No one there has contacted either me or my agent about any problems with the book, so I'm not sure why anyone there would characterize me as being unhelpful. I truly care about what readers get out of my books and worked very hard to produce the absolute best book I could. Of course, I expect it to get even better in future editions and will look forward to receiving your feedback.

If you want to learn UML, this is probably the best book

If you want to learn the Unified Modeling Language, this is probably the best book you can get. The book is well organized. In the first section, you learn the various diagrams which are used. Each lesson takes about an hour, the short exercises at the end of each chapter help reinforce your knowledge. The second section has a case study, I found that each lesson took more than an hour. Overall, I'm quite happy with the book, and I think you will be too if you want to learn UML.

An excellent introduction to UML and OO modeling

I have been a programmer for seven years, but I only recently starting working on projects large enough to warrant detailed design. Although I know quite a lot about object-oriented programming, I didn't know anything about drawing pictures to represent a software system. I read this book in just over six hours--the chapters really only take about 15 minutes to read--and found it to be exactly what I was looking for. It is clear, has excellent examples, and was written at exactly the right level for me.

UML you can understand

Our company is interested in UML, and several people had bought two books by the guys known as The Three Amigos - Booch, Jaconsen, and Rumbaugh (the User Guide and the Software Development Process). I started reading and quickly found that these books moved too far, too fast - the same experience that the others had.I took a look at the UML books in my local computer bookstore and decided to take a chance with this one. I'm glad I did. If you don't have a heavy Computer Science background, you'll find this to be an excellent introduction to UML. Schmuller provides a general introduction, followed by examples of all the main types of diagrams. He follows this up with a case study of automating a restaurant. In every instance the author constantly provides examples from the real world, so it's almost impossible to fail to understand.Schmuller's writing style is great; his background in magazines shows off here, as opposed to the "scholars writing for other scholars" approach of many of the other UML books. The "Twenty-four Hours" format puts the information into bite-size pieces, so you're never overwhelmed with new facts.People with a heavy computer science background will probably find this book doesn't go into enough detail, but the rest of us will be very happy. I'd suggest that if you had a small amount of programming experience you'd be ideal for this book, but anyone who's had some experience of computers can get a lot out of it.After I read this book I came back to the Three Amigos books and suddenly found I could understand them. In fact, I could dip into the books at pretty much any point and follow what was happening.With my new-found knowledge I offered to teach an intoductory course on UML for the people who were struggling with the Three Amigos books, and as I created my outline I realized how well thought-out Schmuller's book is. I didn't have to add much to what he'd written, and I began to realize that his examples must have been carefully chosen to make things very clear.In short - if UML seems like a hard slog to you, or you just think you need a passing knowledge, get this book. If you find that you want to go further, you'll now have the kind of knowledge that the Three Amigos expect from their readers.