UML Distilled: Applying the Standard Object Modelling Language (Object Technology Series) (Paperback)

UML Distilled offers a useful perspective on what UML is and what it's good for. The author, an experienced software engineer, gives his own opinions of which diagrams are best to use. He is never doctrinaire and is always willing to put common sense design ahead of rigid adherence to models and documents. He runs through the basic notation used in UML for such design documents as use case, class, sequence, state, activity and deployment diagrams. In addition, he includes concise examples of the details of working with objects, with an excellent step-by-step rendition of many of the details involved in UML. The author even includes some actual C++ code so you can see what all these design documents lead to.

You'll need some idea of what software engineering is in order to benefit from this book. However, if you have the appropriate background, you'll find this book invaluable in understanding this emerging new standard, which has the potential to bring solid software engineering to many developers who have never used disciplined software design techniques before