Sunday, March 6, 2011

UML Distilled by Martin Fowler et all

Rating: Concise. Worth returning to.

Finally, there is a book about UML written by a practitioner for practitioners. It even has code samples that make sense. Nice.

The only complaint I have at the moment is the amount of forewords and prefaces: 10 pages for a book that has 159 pages of content.

All right, so what did I get out of this book?

  1. Use '''UML as sketch''' to help communicate design ideas.
  2. Everything in UML is optional, so when reading a diagram do no make assumptions based on something not being present.
  3. It is ok to use non-standard notations, if they are better known, or simpler - be pragmatic - the goal is for your audience to understand your design.
  4. There are also useful, non-UML diagrams, like the screen flow diagram, and the decision table.
  5. It is very difficult to get UML right before coding, therefore using UML as blueprint in forward engineering may not be efficient.

This book should be read twice and should be kept around for reference.

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