Java Modeling In Color With UML: Enterprise Components and Process

Java Modeling in Color with UML--printed in color--provides four UML "archetypes" for common entities in business modeling. These have rather abstract names like the moment-interval. Each archetype is assigned a different color in UML. The book uses these four archetypes to model 61 domain-specific business components for manufacturing (including suppliers and inventory control), facilities management, sales, employees, and organizations, plus accounting and document management.

Similar in spirit to software-design patterns, these UML components are catalogued with short prose descriptions and illustrated with UML. The detail here is often impressive, though the type is necessarily small. (Fortunately, the CD-ROM contains all these diagrams--including Java source code--for use within your own designs.) The authors--all experts in UML--have done the heavy lifting here. The idea is to incorporate these components within your own projects.

Besides a catalog of expert components, this book describes the authors' Feature-Driven Development (FDD) software-design process. (While there is one UML standard, design processes still proliferate.) FDD touts good productivity with a minimum of overhead. The authors argue that it can be used productively within today's ever-shorter business cycles.

In all, this book features much more than just color-enhanced UML. It provides a foundation of UML (and Java classes on the CD-ROM) that can model most business problems. If you design with UML, you can surely benefit from this intelligent and visually savvy text. --Richard Dragan