My lecturers reccomended a different book for the course I was doing, but after reading the O'Reilly Perl books, I ignored them. The Perl books were superb: informative, insightful, well-paced and enjoyable to read. I can't say whether this book is informative at all, or gives any great insights into UML because I found it impossible to read. Dry and dull. Drier than drinking all the sand in the Sahara and duller than wearing a blindfold during a total eclipse. The author never uses a short word where a long word would do. I lost count of the number of times he mentioned "paradigm". Only marginally more enjoyable than cholera.