I bought this book two years ago, when I made the transition from programmer to system architect. The project I was getting involved with used UML. The Three Amigo books were available, but I bought this because of past happy experiences with Nutshell books.
The book, in combination with a short course I attended, got me started. However, I can't really recommend it as a starting point. I found it better to learn UML through other means, and use this book as a reference. For that purpose, it was excellent.
The main flaws in the book are:
- it uses UML 1.2. This is a problem, because UML 1.3 has changed greatly in certain respects, especially in the use case diagrams.</LI>
- the book seems to be aimed more at programmers than at analysts and designers. The examples of classes are very much the sort that programmers come up with; basically data tables with accessor (get and set) methods.</LI>
- the tutorial is not suitable for beginners.</LI>
On the whole, I'm pretty positive about the book as a reference work, but it is badly in need of a revision. I suggest the revision should be more "Nutshelly", concentrating on presenting the notation and concepts within a Unified Process context, rather than trying to teach UML.
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