UML Distilled - annotated review, part #1

UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. It is a recent standard, and it is JUST a language... The thing is that there is some confusion about UML, and "UML Distilled" [UMLD], a superb Martin Fowler book, starts by trying hard to make a distinction between a method and a JUST a language:

a method usually implies a language AND process(es), that help build sentences with the language; but a language alone, isn't necessarily related to a single process.

For example, think about C or PASCAL: you can write software from many approaches, such as top-down and bottom-up techniques. On a higher level, think about portuguese or english: you can write natural language sentences with poetic inspiration, or with mathematical semantics...

You have a method, when you have "kind of" guidelines, to do something. For example, there are many software engineering books that tell you about Object Oriented [OO] methodologies, ie, ways of handling a problem and modeling it in such a OO fashion.

Methodologies, can have multiple perspectives, and that is another regular miss, that this book avoids. Great! Usually, Computer Science literature takes a "conceptual", a "specification" and an "implementation" attitude, on case studies, but authors sometimes don't stamp at what level they are...

It is precisely on the importance of knowing your perspective, and knowing what is right at each level, that this short book, marks a difference.

Martin Fowler writers less than 200 pages, yet he flushes you all the key stuff, not only on UML syntax (a graphical syntax, since UML is a graphical language, with boxes and arrows, and stuff like that), but also on his own "informal" high level attitudes (before UML'ing), learned from years of experience.

The book's first chapter (Introduction) writes about "use cases" - something that is replacing the concept of "scenario" - and about "patterns", on the context of "what is UML", and "what high level tasks should be performed". Depending on your knowledge on "OO paths", this first chapter has great chances of debuting you OO techniques like "CRC cards" and "interaction diagrams"...

Overall, you have a fair chance of learning more on "UML Distilled" first chapter's pages, than you've ever learned from those "you must act like this, to achieve that" scholar classes, on methods. Superb! Really superb! I don't like (I HATE!) books that cut "my personally way" [too soon], and if there is something really unusual about Martin Fowler, it is that he always insists that rules CAN BE BENT! and SHOULD BE BENT, as long as you are coherent and can sustain your approach, on several layers.

After the 1st chapter, you'll have an idea about "what is UML", "what UML is NOT", and for "what good can UML be".