Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML

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.

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...

This book is one of the most useful books I have ever owned. Buy it, read it and place it in your inventory next to the other classics on the top shelf because you will reference and recommend this one again and again.Process and structure are increasingly important as VB rapidly moves into the backoffice of corporations and becomes the de facto development platform for more and more business critical applications. Couple this with the fact that the Microsoft-based technology landscape causes us to rethink our application domain on a daily basis and process and industry accepted approaches become an absolute necessity.Mr. Reed outlines a pragmatic approach to using UML within a process (Synergy process) with VB development better than anyone else. The book covers UML techniques in the proper depth without making the reader muddle through pages of useless text. The example outlined in the book is solid and provides an understandable story anyone can follow and instantly apply to their own situation.Mr. Reed's experience lends creditability to the concepts in the book and helps the reader understand how to apply these concepts. He distils the copious topics of UML and using a development process into a single book that would otherwise require the reader to work through several books in order to understand these topics. Hopefully the next version will be in hardback in order to endure its years of use.

Subject: FYI: Review of ISBN 0-201-61579-7 Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 15:42:30 -0800 From: Ravi To: [email protected] CC: [email protected], [email protected], Grant Larsen , [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]"Developing apps with VB and UML"- a practical look on a practical book for VB/COM developers!After reading this classic down-to-earth book (I bought it at @OOPSLA99, Denver), I was quite happly able to dive in. The book starts with a philosophical theme called "synergy" process, yet another RUP based process model, I thought. But as I started reading further, I felt I should recommend every systems analyst to read from chapter 2 until chapter 7. I liked the appraoch of creating event tables to get to use cases.Salient "analytical" pointers here:chapter 3: "event lists/tables", where an event = subject (actor) + verb + objectchapter 4: dissection of the Ivor'y definition of use case; thinking ahead in time of deployment componentized architecture.chapter 5: use case template (looks similar to Alister Cockbern's one); static modeling- particularly "analysis classes" illustratedchapter 6: "screen structure charts" (as a diagram "type") should be a good addition to UML, with some work (-e.g. web UI, Say Grady, Cris?)chapter 7: usage matrices; dynamic modeling (-I like when he says "happy path" of use case, as in `sequence diagram of the happy path' ;-)And as I got to the chapter 8 "technology landscape", the architect in me got hooked onto the rest of the book, since the architectural layers started shaping up. I thought I should recommend every architect and developer (VB or otherwise) in our company to read chapters 8 onwards.Salient "techie" pointers here:Chapter 8: some "anti-patterns" (pp. 194-5) for out-of-process communication in COM.(May be when someone writes a book for EAI modeling audience including me and surely Grady and Cris, s/he will have to scale this beyond DCOM).Chapter 9: design of a persistance framework layer for data access; mapping class design to relational design, rose-scripting for DDL gen.Chapter 10: services layers need for applying the infrastructure for CBD.Chapter 11: layers in depth; Rose/VB RTE -interestingly I am toying around with Rose2000 on cleaner RTE and got some food for beta team.Chapter 12: -- do -- + code change management in VB for enhanced requirements/change requests (VB was known to defy maintenance in past!)Chapter 13: continues constructing distributed implementation with DCOM/MTSChapter 14: Internet based design issues (-maybe redo screen structure charts now, supplementing with Jim Conallen's web modeling concepts;-)The only glitch in this techie portion of the book is that the author does not mention patterns. Patterns gurus will forgive him for that, I suspect, especially after the trial of the GoF at OOPSLA99 conference at Denver ;-)Now after reading this book, how can I influence our 40+ devel

This book is essential for anyone who has dabbled in VB and is looking to build large scale robust systems. Too often VB is viewed as a toy language for developing small GUIs. Larger VB systems are often brittle, with the blame put on the language. In most cases, these brittle systems should be blamed on inexperienced developers with no design and no plan. This book shows you how to design systems in VB, document the system using UML, and make your project a success. Don't waste your money on more reference-type books. Buy this one instead.