Rating: 

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.