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Summary: Clears the fog!
Review: After buying and reading numerous tomes on the various elements of enterprise development with VB, SQL Server, MTS, IIS, etc., I have found THE book that puts it all together and clears much of the accumulated fog.The Synergy process and the sample project (Remulak) provide an excellent framework which Mr. Reed uses as a backdrop for his concise conceptual and technical explanations. This is perhaps the finest development book I have ever read in terms of artfully blending the "what is" and the "how to." This book has, and will, save me hours of slogging in my efforts to develop my skills and build useful and adaptable business systems.
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Summary: A thorough treatment of UML, VB and their integration.
Review: As a small independent software developer, I realized that I needed to formalize my design and development processes. After reading this book I now use it as a template for all my projects. The designs I use today follow the chapters as I have yet to see a better outline. As a result of this book, my applications are better designed, more easily constructed, and more accurately priced and delivered.
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Summary: Essential part of my business
Review: As a small independent software developer, I realized that I needed to formalize my design and development processes. After reading this book I now use it as a template for all my projects. The designs I use today follow the chapters as I have yet to see a better outline. As a result of this book, my applications are better designed, more easily constructed, and more accurately priced and delivered.
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Summary: A Classic from an Experienced Software Professional
Review: First my disclaimer. I am a long-time client, partner and friend of Paul Reed. However, I thought it was important to point out the specific benefits that any analyst, designer, VB developer or manager will gain from this excellent book. Paul's reputation as a writer, consultant and instructor is that he makes the complex simple. In this book, he has taken the confusing world of Visual Basic, OOAD, UML, COM/DCOM/COM+, MTS and the Internet and turned it into one coherent picture using an end-to-end case study of a music retailer. He tackles the main issues head-on: Is Visual Basic "really" object-oriented? What does a three-tier architecture really look like underneath the pretty block diagrams? How do you map an object structure to a relational database? How can you generate useful VB code from a tool like Rational Rose? How do use cases fit into analysis of an application domain? What's the difference between physical application partitioning and logical partitioning? Which do I do when? What is a really useful example of using the UML to "pen the problem?" (Hint: he does not use an automated teller machine as his example.) Pick up this book if you are confused about all the terminology surrounding VB, the UML, software development lifecycle and Web development. Pick up this book if you want to see real object models and code that relates directly to the creation of business systems. Oh, heck, just pick up this book! The real gems in this book are not the UML diagrams or the VB code. The genius of Paul's approach lies in the additional worksheets and tables he has created to fill the gaps in producing a complete software development process. I'm thinking here of the event table, use case coupling matrix, event-frequency matrix, object/location matrix and several others. This turn a theoretical process into something you can sit down and use day one. My overall recommendation: If you are using Visual Basic on a project, large or small, buy this book. If you are already using the UML and OO techniques, so much the better, this book will be even more helpful.
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Summary: Personal Comments About Developing Distribuited Applications
Review: I found the Rational Rose diagrams in the book soo useful with very clear example and good tips to mapping classes to tables but when I read the code I found very serious mistakes, overall in the business and data access components. First the data access component don't return the correct value when you use a query to insert or delete a record (use records affected to return a correct value) e.g. Cn.Execute MyQuery, ConnectionString, retVal. Finally, the parameter are variant in the function getInfo and you read and skip nulls for each record, If the table has 20000 records! your application probably frozen. You should use a by value recordset and to skip nulls you should make code in a COM component. e.g txtFirstName.Text = objNull.SkipNull
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Summary: UML comes to life.
Review: 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.
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Summary: This book opens the door to true OO development for business
Review: IDC recently reported that of the 13.1 million developer seats in the world in 1999, 7.2 million were using Visual Basic! This seems to prove what I've told my students that Visual Basic is the successor to Cobol for business application development. To make that really work with industrial strength applications for business requires the use of best engineering practices. Paul Reed has captured those here in a no nonsense way that works and is being used increasingly by IT organizations to gain competitive advantage. The book establishes a sound methodology to use with industry standard UML notation. It then goes on to demonstrate the implementation in Visual Basic. This is exactly what every professional application architect needs to know. This is so good as well as readable that I have adopted this as my textbook for my graduate Object-Oriented Application Development courses. You should have it too...
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Summary: Should have '#1 on Times Best Sellers List' on Cover
Review: 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.
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Summary: A thorough treatment of UML, VB and their integration.
Review: Mr. Reed's book explains the UML and its use with VB application development very clearly and concisely. Not only does it outline an effective development methodology, but it also provides robust, easy-to-use diagrams and templates to apply the process to your own development efforts. A first-rate treatment of the subject!
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Summary: Insightful, useful and mind-expanding
Review: Paul Reed hit a lot of nails right on the head. This book is a useful combined walk-through of his "Synergy" analytic process, UML, Rational Rose, and Visual Basic. It was useful and interesting to read. The combination of the process and tools here have powerful potential to increase productivity and success.
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