Has anyone used UML?

[Elf Sternberg]

In article <pcolmn9y349.fsf at thoth.home> 
    Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche at math.ntnu.no> writes:

>+ Tim Churches <tchur at optushome.com.au>:

>| No experience (I am in a similar situation to you wrt UML), just
>| some advice: don't buy the O'Reilly book 'UML in a Nutshell' - it is
>| the only O'Reilly title I have encountered which is truly woeful
>| (most are quite good).

>Hmm.  Has it occured to you that this might be a reflection on UML
>rather than on the book per se?

        No, it's true.  The UML book by O'Reilly is atrocious.  The
author tries *so hard* to convince the reader that UML is not about
modelling programs but about modelling "business practices" that he goes
overboard avoiding programming examples.  The author also seems to
introduce topics at random without going through the process of actually
creating a model for the user to use.

        The big problem I have with UML is that it's owned, lock, stock
and barrell, by Rational Rose.  Every book I have seen on the subject
cheerleads Rational Rose products and makes it sound like, "yes, you can
do it without Rational Rose, but you can also build a computer with
tinkertoys.  Why do that when we'll give your our
superduperdeluxeUMLpackage for only $79,999.95?"

        UML is nothing more than a simple way of describing program
models.  Two of the better books I've seen on the subject are "A UML
Pattern Language" (totally buzzword compliant, but the concise summary
of "what UML is" in part 1 and the "best UML practices" collection in
part 2 were worth it) and "Building Web Applications with UML" (again,
because the summary is precise and maybe because appservers are my field
of specialization), but the latter is a Rational cheerleader.  

        Oddly, it's the little things that help.  I didn't really grok
the relationship between a Use Case and a Sequence Diagram until someone
told me "In a sequence diagram, the vertical bar is the lifetime of an
instance; the horizontal bars are applications of a use case."  And then
a lot of the OO stuff I'd been using for years clicked.

        ... and then it was time to refactor.  :-)

                Elf

--
Elf M. Sternberg, rational romantic mystical cynical idealist
http://www.halcyon.com/elf/

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