UML Distilled A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language

by Fowler, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780321193681
• ISBN10: 0321193687
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-15
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

bull; The best-selling UML book on the market, thoroughly revised and updated bull; More pearls of wisdom from Martin Fowler, one the foremost names in the field of object technology bull; Introduces the concept of modelling, stresses the importance of software process, and discusses the most essential parts of the UM

Author Biography

Martin Fowler is the Chief Scientist of ThoughtWorks

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xvii
Foreword to the Third Edition	p. xxi
Foreword to the First Edition	p. xxiii
Preface	p. xxv
Why Bother with the UML?	p. xxvi
Structure of the Book	p. xxvii
Changes for the Third Edition	p. xxvii
Acknowledgments	p. xxviii
Introduction	p. 1
What Is the UML?	p. 1
Ways of Using the UML	p. 2
How We Got to the UML	p. 7
Notations and Meta-Models	p. 9
UML Diagrams	p. 10
What Is Legal UML?	p. 13
The Meaning of UML	p. 14
UML Is Not Enough	p. 14
Where to Start with the UML	p. 16
Where to Find Out More	p. 16
Development Process	p. 19
Iterative and Waterfall Processes	p. 19
Predictive and Adaptive Planning	p. 23
Agile Processes	p. 24
Rational Unified Process	p. 25
Fitting a Process to a Project	p. 26
Fitting the UML into a Process	p. 29
Requirements Analysis	p. 29
Design	p. 30
Documentation	p. 31
Understanding Legacy Code	p. 32
Choosing a Development Process	p. 33
Where to Find Out More	p. 33
Class Diagrams: The Essentials	p. 35
Properties	p. 35
Attributes	p. 36
Associations	p. 37
Multiplicity	p. 38
Programming Interpretation of Properties	p. 39
Bidirectional Associations	p. 41
Operations	p. 43
Generalization	p. 45
Notes and Comments	p. 46
Dependency	p. 47
Constraint Rules	p. 49
When to Use Class Diagrams	p. 51
Where to Find Out More	p. 52
Sequence Diagrams	p. 53
Creating and Deleting Participants	p. 56
Loops, Conditionals, and the Like	p. 57
Synchronous and Asynchronous Calls	p. 61
When to Use Sequence Diagrams	p. 61
Class Diagrams: Advanced Concepts	p. 65
Keywords	p. 65
Responsibilities	p. 66
Static Operations and Attributes	p. 66
Aggregation and Composition	p. 67
Derived Properties	p. 68
Interfaces and Abstract Classes	p. 69
Read-Only and Frozen	p. 72
Reference Objects and Value Objects	p. 73
Qualified Associations	p. 74
Classification and Generalization	p. 75
Multiple and Dynamic Classification	p. 76
Association Class	p. 78
Template (Parameterized) Class	p. 81
Enumerations	p. 82
Active Class	p. 83
Visibility	p. 83
Messages	p. 84
Object Diagrams	p. 87
When to Use Object Diagrams	p. 87
Package Diagrams	p. 89
Packages and Dependencies	p. 91
Package Aspects	p. 93
Implementing Packages	p. 94
When to Use Package Diagrams	p. 95
Where to Find Out More	p. 95
Deployment Diagrams	p. 97
When to Use Deployment Diagrams	p. 98
Use Cases	p. 99
Content of a Use Case	p. 100
Use Case Diagrams	p. 102
Levels of Use Cases	p. 103
Use Cases and Features (or Stories)	p. 104
When to Use Use Cases	p. 104
Where to Find Out More	p. 105
State Machine Diagrams	p. 107
Internal Activities	p. 109
Activity States	p. 109
Superstates	p. 110
Concurrent States	p. 111
Implementing State Diagrams	p. 111
When to Use State Diagrams	p. 114
Where to Find Out More	p. 115
Activity Diagrams	p. 117
Decomposing an Action	p. 119
Partitions	p. 120
Signals	p. 121
Tokens	p. 124
Flows and Edges	p. 124
Pins and Transformations	p. 125
Expansion Regions	p. 126
Flow Final	p. 127
Join Specifications	p. 128
And There's More	p. 129
When to Use Activity Diagrams	p. 129
Where to Find Out More	p. 130
Communication Diagrams	p. 131
When to Use Communication Diagrams	p. 133
Composite Structures	p. 135
When to Use Composite Structures	p. 137
Component Diagrams	p. 139
When to Use Component Diagrams	p. 141
Collaborations	p. 143
When to Use Collaborations	p. 146
Interaction Overview Diagrams	p. 147
When to Use Interaction Overview Diagrams	p. 147
Timing Diagrams	p. 149
When to Use Timing Diagrams	p. 150
Changes between UML Versions	p. 151
Revisions to the UML	p. 151
Changes in UML Distilled	p. 152
Changes from UML 1.0 to 1.1	p. 153
Type and Implementation Class	p. 153
Complete and Incomplete Discriminator Constraints	p. 154
Composition	p. 154
Immutability and Frozen	p. 154
Returns on Sequence Diagrams	p. 154
Use of the Term "Role"	p. 155
Changes from UML 1.2 (and 1.1) to 1.3 (and 1.5)	p. 155
Use Cases	p. 155
Activity Diagrams	p. 156
Changes from UML 1.3 to 1.4	p. 157
Changes from UML 1.4. to 1.5	p. 157
From UML 1.x to UML 2.0	p. 157
Class Diagrams: The Essentials (Chapter 3)	p. 158
Sequence Diagrams (Chapter 4)	p. 158
Class Diagrams: Concepts (Chapter 5)	p. 158
State Machine Diagrams (Chapter 10)	p. 159
Activity Diagrams (Chapter 11)	p. 159
Bibliography	p. 161
Index	p. 167
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

I've been lucky in a lot of ways in my life; one of my great strokes of fortune was being in the right place with the right knowledge to write the first edition of this book in 1997. Back then, the chaotic world of object-oriented (OO) modeling was just beginning to unify under the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Since then, the UML has become the standard for the graphical modeling of software, not just for objects. My fortune is that this book has been the most popular book on the UML, selling more than a quarter of a million copies.Well, that's very nice for me, but should you buy this book? I like to stress that this is a brief book. It's not intended to give you the details on every facet of the UML, which has grown and grown over the years. My intention is to find that fraction of the UML that is most useful and tell you just that. Although a bigger book gives you more detail, it also takes longer to read. And your time is the biggest investment you'll make in a book. By keeping this book small, I've spent the time selecting the best bits to save you from having to do that selection yourself. (Sadly, being smaller doesn't mean proportionately cheaper; there is a certain fixed cost to producing a quality technical book.) One reason to have this book is to begin to learn about the UML. Because this is a short book, it will quickly get you up to speed on the essentials of the UML. With that under your belt, you can go into more detail on the UML with the bigger books, such as theUser GuideBooch, UML user or theReference ManualRumbaugh, UML Reference. This book can also act as a handy reference to the most common parts of the UML. Although the book doesn't cover everything, it's a lot lighter to carry around than most other UML books. It's also an opinionated book. I've been working with objects for a long time now, and I have definite ideas about what works and what doesn't. Any book reflects the opinions of the author, and I don't try to hide mine. So if you're looking for something that has a flavor of objectivity, you might want to try something else. Although many people have told me that this book is a good introduction to objects, I didn't write it with that in mind. If you are after an introduction to OO design, I suggest Craig Larman's book Larman. Many people who are interested in the UML are using tools. This book concentrates on the standard and on conventional usage of the UML and doesn't get into the details of what various tools support. Although the UML did resolve the tower of Babel of pre-UML notations, many annoying differences remain between what tools show and allow when drawing UML diagrams. I don't say much in this book about Model Driven Architecture (MDA). Although many people consider the two to be the same thing, many developers use the UML without being interested in MDA. If you want to learn more about MDA, I would start with this book to get an overview of the UML first and then move on to a book that's more specific about MDA. Although the main point of this book is the UML, I've also added bits of other material about techniques, such as CRC cards, that are valuable for OO design. The UML is just a part of what you need to succeed with objects, and I think that it's important to introduce you to some other techniques. In a brief book like this, it's impossible to go into detail about how the UML relates to source code, particularly as there is no standard way of making that correspondence. However, I do point out common coding techniques for implementing pieces of the UML. My code examples are in Java and C#, as I've found that these languages are usually the most widely understood. Don't assume that I prefer those languages; I've done too much Smalltalk for that! Why Bother with the UML?