UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language by MartinFowler & Kendall Scott
Last ECOOP, MartinFowler announced this book as the tiniest book on methods, in this case the UnifiedModelingLanguage, ever written. I bet it is the tiniest, but it is much more than a book on UML. It was fun to read the commonsense advice of an experienced practitioner.
A must read for developers, analysts, programmers and managers who face bureaucracy and method-implementors more interested in delivering the documents for their ISO-like target than in practical use.
UML Distilled: Applying the Standard Object Modeling Language (Addison Wesley 1997)
ISBN 0-201-65783-X for the second edition.
The third edition, published September 2003, covers UML 2.0 - it has ISBN 9780321193681 .
Fowler's homepage for the book, http://www.martinfowler.com/articles.html#uml, has links to the errata and some supplemental material.
I enjoyed this! -- MartineDevos
I am currently reading it and it is great so far. My company has recently implemented the RationalUnifiedProcess and this book is really making the UML concepts clear.
UmlDistilled is high protein. Along with an intro to the basics of UML, Fowler packs this short book with lots of practical advise on using UML for analysis and design, including some thoughts on when to bend the rules. I highly recommend it, particularly for folks who need to pick up UML in a hurry. -- DaveSmith
A distilled review : "Excellent". -- LaurentBossavit