Just as architects and musicians need architectural drawings or music scores to be written using standard notations that everyone agrees on and understands, developers need a single, common, widely usable modeling language for the development of software systems. The UML has been proposed as this standard and has received the support of academic and industry heavyweights.
The Unified Modeling Language User Guide is the first of three definitive UML works written by the creators of UML, Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson. Together these three widely respected and world-famous methodologists form an unbeatable author team representing combined worldwide sales of their prior individual books of more than 250,000 copies. This book will introduce the core 80% of the UML, approaching it in a layered fashion and providing numerous examples of its application. The Unified Modeling Language User Guide is suitable for developers unfamiliar with UML or with modeling in general.
One of the most important recent developments in software engineering is the Unified Modelling Language (UML) standard for documenting software designs. Written by UML's inventors (the so-called Three Amigos of software engineering),
The Unified Modelling Language User Guide provides a very appealing guide to all the fundamentals of using UML effectively. The book opens with a basic tour of the essential concepts and modelling diagrams used in UML, including class diagrams, use case diagrams and basic modelling principles. The authors pay close attention to modelling classes (and documenting the relationships between classes) as well as use case diagrams (which show how software will be used by various actors in a system). This book mixes in a little software engineering theory, too, but it makes use of clear examples and actual UML diagrams to illustrate key concepts.
Later in the book, the authors discuss more difficult notational diagrams (such as state diagrams and activity diagrams, which can be used to model behaviour in a system). Whatever your background in software engineering, you'll no doubt appreciate the author's clear explanations of basic (and advanced) modelling concepts, as well as the nuts-and-bolts details of today's powerful UML. With its combination of expert modelling advice and excellent detail on the specifics of UML, this book will be absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to use UML for real- world software design. --Richard Dragan, Amazon.com