Not the best book for learning UML
Not the best book for learning UML. It is too much reading to get to the core ideas. "UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language" in more of my type.
Will teach you how to model, but it won't tell you how to turn this into code
My message title says it all, I gave this book 4 stars mainly because I read the book and learn a lot from it, and because the author seems like a good person who is trying to advocate the idea that people should help and rely and trust more in themselves and their own judgements
The author occasioanlly critic the traditional RUP method and suggest improvements to it. I like this, it implies no method is perfect and that you should be creative in using development methods, and follow none of them blindly
This book is introductory level, and it's a very very good one at that, this book can take you from beginner to inetmediate level effectively.
What is missing from this book is, real life cases and situations. A lot of problems you face as a system analysist, are related with dealing with management and customers, I don't recall that this was even mentioned in the book (but I read this book a while ago)
The other more serious problem with this book, is that after you learn to create your models and collect the requirement (teaching you nice ways to manage requirement is one of this book strongest point) you aren't really told how to map this to code, you are tought how to map this to object, but not all code is object oriented, most code nowadays is framework base, you transform your model into the model of the framework you use. Plus many application that systems analysist are involved with, include a database backend, so mainly you design a db model and find a way to add the business rules, in the db, in the form, in the framework, I know this isn't supposed to be "how to build a db app" book, but honestly most ppl who can use this book, are ppl who are stuggling with creating a not so complex db app, so I think a good intro book, could have included a chapter that address this very common app type, no big deal
Anyway, to sum it all, its a good book, speically for requirement, its also a fairly honest book, and the author just feels good.
I do plan to buy his other book called agile db something ... I think together with this book they are a good package for beginners to intermediate analysts
Timeless Principles
I've been looking at the online text of Scott's Object Primer 3/e and just ordered my own copy, because he's the first person I've seen other than Ivar Jacobsen to get Use Cases completely right.
I have been using Use Cases since before UML 1.0 and I have always been disappointed by the general inability of practitioners to understand and apply the extend and include dependencies (and their predecessors.) Many practitioners advise against the use of these dependencies (which is better than using them incorrectly or inconsistently.) I have found no tool that implements them completely and correctly.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Scott Ambler's treatment of these dependencies in the Object Primer 3/e matched my own experience applying them in many environments.
First, he states they should be used sparingly. (Overly complex collections of use cases and diagrams are not helpful to anyone.)
Second, he has a consistent notation for the point at which each
extend or include dependency is invoked. (Some practitioners state that the base use case should not have a reference to the extension, others leave off references to included use cases - neither of these practices is consistent with UML 2.0.)
These are simple principles, but not following them has caused many people to get far less out of their use cases than they could have.
A good way to teach old programming dogs new tricks
Even though object-oriented programming (OOP) has been around for many years and is taught in the computer science programs at colleges and universities, there are still many developers who do not know it. What this means is that those who are now performing the migration to OOP are primarily old dogs that need to learn the latest tricks. This book is perfect for that task, Ambler writes very clearly and covers all of the major aspects of OOP.
There are two outstanding features of the book. The first is the clear writing style and the second is the completeness of coverage. Not only are the fundamentals of OOP covered, but the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is also introduced. Since the U in UML could now be considered a representative for Universal, most developers need to be able to understand it. Ambler also covers some of the basic features of design patterns, components, use cases, object-oriented analysis, object-oriented design and object-oriented testing. These are generally considered to be advanced topics, but as presented here are well within the level of an introductory book.
The only negative point is the significant amount of duplication that is done. For example, on page 410 there is a boxed region for the definition:
Subject Matter Expert (SME) - A person who is responsible for providing pertinent information about the problem and/or technical domain either from personal knowledge or from research.
An excellent definition, but the problem is that it was already defined on page 35 and was used many times in the pages between 35 and 410, especially in the chapter on gathering requirements. There are many similar situations throughout the book, so many that I often considered segments redundant.
This book could also be used as a textbook in a course on the principles of object-oriented programming without using a specific language. Some Java code is used, but it is very skeletal and is used to demonstrate the initial steps in constructing your application from the design principles.
Worth Buying Book and Useful Book for Object-Oriented Design
This book is very useful for me. As a JAVA Programmer i was always confused with the notations used by various authors. I found the notations used in this book to draw various design diagrams are simple and understandable. I thank author for producing such an excellent book for Object-Oriented programmers and designers.
(19 reviews)
