Review by Billy Barron

"The Unified Modeling Language User Guide" by Booch, Jacboson, and Rumbaugh (Addison-Wesley; ISBNs 0-201-57168-4) is supposed to teach you UML. This book does this in a very detailed way.

Unfortunately, for this book, there is another book in the same series called "UML Distilled" that I find to be a better user's guide than the book at hand. However, UML Distilled does not go into much detail. You will find much more detail here in this book.

One problem with the book is that since Booch, Jacobson, and Rumbaugh invited UML, they overhype it. For example, "If you can think it, the UML can model it." I regularly encounter situations where you have to force certain types of problems into UML and are better off not using it.

On the other hand, in the same page, it says "You can model 80% of most problems by using about 20% of the UML." Here they are dead on target. You just have to evaluate what to listen to in this book because it is good ideas and hype mixed together.

On the whole, it is a pretty good book. "UML Distilled" is even better though and the book I recommend for UML beginner. Also, one tactic is to read "UML Distilled" first, do some modeling, and graduate to the User Guide. This User Guide has a lot of depth to it.