[.ca] Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML (ISBN 0201615797)

From Amazon.com:
Written for those with just a little Visual Basic experience, Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML provides a comprehensive guide to bringing VB up to date with coverage of component-based multitiered development using software engineering techniques and UML modeling tools. This book achieves an excellent mix of accessibility, theory, and practice for enterprise VB development. There are a number of goals in Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML, and this text succeeds on several levels. Besides introducing the author's own Synergy software development process, the book also provides a thorough tour of today's UML for creating design documents, plus Microsoft's DNA solution for component-based distributed computing in VB. By centering on tools-based design and coding (using Rational Rose as the modeling tool and the VB environment itself), this book is able to show off UML for design and then the steps for building and deploying data-aware VB components on the Windows NT platform. This step-by-step tour from initial project proposal and planning to elaboration and construction phases never gets bogged down in software engineering jargon. The author provides his expertise of what works and what doesn't. (For instance, he offers a generic VB component for returning records regardless of your chosen database connection strategy.) The book culminates in a multitiered VB database for a hypothetical music store. A final chapter shows how to create ASP-based Web interfaces with the same components. This title strikes just the right balance between covering essential tools and design strategies and can be a valuable asset for VB programmers who want to learn component-based Internet development using their favorite programming tool. This book is all you need to bring your knowledge of traditional client/server VB into the world of enterprise development, including how to build Web-based interfaces. --Richard Dragan Topics covered: Visual Basic and UML overview; the Synergy Process Model (a software design process); the Rational Rose modeling tool; VB as an object-oriented language; object design, including interface inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism; UML support in VB; project inception and planning; use cases and pathways; designing classes (relationships, attributes, and operations); prototyping; screen design; sequence; collaboration; state and activity diagrams; usage matrices; Microsoft's Distributed interNet Architecture (DNA) overview and n-tiered application basics; database fundamentals; database translation and data access services; building VB components from UML, DCOM, and MTS basics; using transactions, VB, and ASPs for Web-based interfaces.

UML comes to life.:
I lead a small team of software developers and have been trying to figure out how to use UML to bring some method into the madness that is our design, development and implementation process. Before picking up Paul Reed's book I hade looked at UML Distilled(Fowler & Scott) and Fundamentals of OO design in UML(Page-Jones) both these books were heavily recommended as introductions and I found them helpful. After reading them I had the strong feeling that UML was just what I was looking for but could not quite see exactly how I would use it in my work. I could see that UML presented an array of powerful and useful diagrams but could not really figure out quite how they related to each other. Reed's book really breathed life into UML for me. Reading it I began to understand how the UML diagrams fitted together in the context of a development process. It gave me the insights to begin to see how we can use UML in our work. I have used Visual Basic quite a bit so the VB focus in the book was helpful. However, the book stands well as an introductory text on UML for those with no knowledge or interest in VB. The book gives a good (and critical) description of the Microsoft Technology landscape - DNA, COM/DCOM, MTS, ASP. Reed clearly explains what these things are and how to use them within context of UML/OOD.

Should have '#1 on Times Best Sellers List' on Cover:
It is just that good! Coming from a primarily Unix world, I was looking for a book to help my transition to VB -- but not just a reference on coding -- one that had real world applications from start to finish employing today's technologies which are robust and resilient enough to stand the test of time. I found it in the book: Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML. Paul Reed covers extensive ground in this book from gathering requirements to class design to code generation, painstakingly detailing each phase while employing UML throughout. His discussions on Microsoft's tiering architecture and DDL generation from modeling tools were most enlightening real world techniques. Personally, I feel that this book is for anyone looking for insight into proficient system architecture whether or not you are using VB.

More trees than forest:
Reviewer: johare4 from Santa Fe, NM USA This book falls in between Terry Quatrani's book "Visual Modeling with Rational Rose and UML" and Murray Cantor's book "Object-Oriented Project Management". Terry's book focuses on the mechanics of using various UML diagrams. The examples are based on a simple Course Enrollment system that serves to provide an example of the diagrams, but not much more insight than a a bus tour. Murray's book hits the management issues and provides a more realistic example of an aircraft cockpit simulator. He focuses on the management issues and ably describes how UML can help with the customer relations,team communication, and keeping the project on track and on budget. Paul Reed tries to do all these things and includes a lot of code to boot. There is a problem with Paul's approach. Because of the amount of detail, I found it easy to get lost. What issues are balanced in ending up with Paul's choices? Paul tries to tell me, but the issues are so closely tied to the Remulak Productions example of a musical instrument company that extraction of the idea from this particular example can be a headache that takes you back and forth through a lot of code and a lot of chapters. In the end, you will know far more than you ever wanted about Remulak Productions. I find the issues and the art much more lucidly presented in Ivar Jacobson's "Object-oriented Software Engineering". Bottom Line: If you want to know semantics: Quatrani, if you want to know management: Cantor, if you want a lot of detail, particularly how code is generated: Reed, if you want perspective: Jacobson.

Good start, but...:
This book did fill the purpose I bought it for - to help get me started down the UML path. It provided a good starting point to figure out how each UML diagram maps to VB concepts. But, the author has a very bizarre methodology that he uses to build applications, which he uses this book to evangelize. I found myself disagreeing with much of what he wrote. I skimmed the last half-dozen chapters due to the very high level of unfounded personal theory, and poorly laid out code examples. The other major problem with the book is that the middle part reads like a user's guide for Rational Rose, a tool most programmers cannot afford. Visio would have been far more relevant, although if it could have been made tool-agnostic with regards to modelling applications, that would have been even better. Overall, I found the book to be worth the money it cost, since the first part of the book really helped me understand how UML works, the time I wasted with the last part really wasn't worth it. Due yourself a favor, if you are a VB programmer who wants to learn UML - buy the book, and rip out everything from around the middle of the book onward.

Design effective VB applications With UML:
Visual Basic is the wild west of modern software development tools, supporting RAD (rapid application development) and seemingly promoting a ready, fire, aim approach to developing applications. UML, the Uniform Modeling Language, and a software process aren't always easy to use with VB, and most UML books take a high-level view that make it hard to apply to VB development. Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML breaks ground in an area where I've seen no other book yet do a good job, applying UML to VB. UML is a complex design notation that works best with object oriented design and programming tools, but VB 6 is at best object-based. Reading most generic UML books requires, at the very least, an advanced degree in computer science, keeping it to the intellectual elite of the software world. The author has bridged this gap effectively, relating the various diagrams and tools in UML to VB applications, demonstrating how you can apply them to real applications. And relating terms and concepts in VB to those in UML is a big help as well. This is a complex, in-depth book, and it would be easy to get lost in the conceptual discussions and sample project. But between the clearly marked process diagram used consistently throughout, goals and checkpoints that start and finish each chapter, and constant relating of new concepts to those covered before, the author helps the reader stay clearly focused on the big picture and which part is being discussed. Rational Rose is used as the sample design tool throughout the book. This might annoy readers using other tools, but the Rose-specific discussions were light enough that you should be able learn the technique well enough to apply it with other tools. The author sometimes gets bogged down in a few too many step by step listings to accomplish a given task in VB. Anyone picking up this book had better have a pretty good feel for VB already, or will become quickly lost. The one thing that mildly annoyed me is that the author introduces yet another design process methodology, his Synergy system. Synergy seems reasonable enough-I haven't yet given it a work out-but I'm not sure that the world needs another methodology. I'm not sure that you could sit down, read this book, and emerge an effective design engineer for enterprise applications using VB. But if you have a good feel for what it takes to build robust applications, have some familiarity with software engineering concepts, and have struggled applying them to VB projects, the book provides an excellent bridge between VB and UML. Certainly the best I've seen so far, and applying the techniques are sure to improve your development projects.