Modeling XML Applications with UML: Practical E-Business Applications

Like many web-related technologies XML and its many derivatives have evolved much more quickly than the support from traditional modelling and development tools. As a result many developers creating XML-based applications are doing so with the crudest of tools, and find it very difficult to either exchange ideas with more traditional developers, or to benefit from the strengths of more powerful tools and modelling approaches. This book sets out to address that issue, and it does an excellent job. At the same time, the book provides a valuable introduction to a range of XML and e-Business technologies for those more familiar with traditional approaches. I found it answered a lot of questions I had about XML which had not been addressed by reading more typical "how to" books, so this book bridges the divide both ways. The book starts out by setting out its aim - to bridge the XML and UML communities, and provides a high-level overview of both areas. It then focuses in on the key issue of e-Business integration, both as a common challenge and an area which will naturally affect both communities. In subsequent chapters the author discusses defining a business vocabulary, and shows how an XML vocabulary can be modelled in UML, or generated from it. Having established this basis the author then discusses a number of XML-related standards, including XMI, XPath, XPointer, XLink, XML DTDs and Schemas, and XSLT, in each case using UML models to explain how the pieces fit together. Finally, the last few chapters present an overall e-Business architecture based around the examples in the rest of the book, bringing all the pieces together in the context of Web Services. It's the curse of all technical writers and publishers that whatever you write is rapidly out of date, and this book suffers a little from that. Published in 2001 it views several key standards (such as XSD and core Web Service protocols) as "proposals", and frequently omits details from examples because of this uncertainty. A reader would be well advised to supplement it with more up to date reading around the technical details. That said, this book is well written, easy to read, and covers a niche which is still almost unoccupied. The companion web site backs the book up with some valuable material, including a free downloadable tool for XML modelling, generation and reverse-engineering. I'd love David to do a second edition, moderately refreshed to present a 2004 view of the various standards and how they fit together. The core of the book wouldn't have to change. Until that book turns up, I'm happy to recommend this one.

David Carlson has produced a book that discusses how to integrate two important technologies: UML and XML. More than that, the book serves as a primer to both. Even if you already know UML or XML, you'll probably learn something new about each. References are supplied for those who want to learn more. For me, I also found that the book planted seeds for new ideas.The material is presented in a practical way, around a simple business application. This makes the technologies more concrete and easier to understand. Fortunately, the reader is not overwhelmed by endless code listings - though there are enough nuts and bolts to make the concepts understandable.Key concepts such as vocabularies, schemas, and portals are explained well. The book also touches on related technologies, such as RSS, XSLT, SOAP and UUDI. All in the context of a practical use case. I found the examples useful even if I design community based portals and not e-Business applications.Hopefully the book will lay down the foundation for standards in schema development.

David Carlson's book on "Modeling XML Applications with UML" is an excellent contribution to the business of building distributed e-Business applications. My only complaint with the book is the title which emphasizes the subject of UML over the subtitle of "Practical e-Business Applications." Mr. Carlson painstakingly builds up the requisite knowledge one must possess around XML, DTD, XML Schema, other XML schemas, XSL, XSLT, XPath, XPointer, XLink, XMI, and UML in a lucid, cogent manner; both defining each piece of the puzzle and providing an excellent overview of how they all fit together. What has emerged is an excellent overview of the W3C and OMG efforts to recommend standards that serve the building of eBusiness applications. The examples that he provides are particularly useful as he draws from industry and open source efforts to define XML vocabularly such as Rich Site Summary and Jetspeed's Portal Site Markup Language (and he practices what he preaches, one look at his XMLModeling.com web site will testify to this). Of particulary value is the soup-to-nuts example that Dave cooked up, called Catalog Markup Language (CatML), in order to take the reader to just the right and intended level of understanding. These examples and the corresponding discussion is a non-gratuitous, yet complete, resource for anyone trying to get bootstrapped into all of the moving parts around building applications that cross organizational/corporate boundaries. Dave leaves no stone unturned in pulling the whole story together in his description of portals, vortals and related technology that sets these valuable BtoB capabilities in motion; his prescience in describing the roles of various channels such as wireless devices is much appreciated, and for including a discussion on Web Services, which will be the next big architectural holy grail, makes for an excellent resource that paints a broad picture with just the right amount of depth on each subject.The title tells us the main objective, which is the role of UML modeling in working with XML, but I would suggest that the story built up in an effort to reach this objective is much more valuable than the objective itself. Thanks professor, nice job.

I read this book to get a better understanding of UML--and I am very pleased at how useful it was. What was a nice surprise is to have found an excellent book on XML business applications. I am one of the orginal founders of XML, so really was not expecting this.A must read for anyone interested in modeling, UML or how XML should be used in eBusiness.

I just picked up "XML/UML" and am ecstatic!! I have to thank Dave for putting all of this practical info together. It is what I was so desperatly looking for. From all the dozens of books I've purused at the bookstores I can say this is the ONLY high level book about XML apps on the market. This book takes one beyond modelling and into the belly of the beast of real world application production. I've looked at (and unfortunetly purchased) some of those tomes which are 3x the size but yet contained only 1/100th of the "actionable knowledge". I've even taken the Microsoft course "1905: Building XML Apps" but found it to be a bunch of *bs*. While it was a good primer who in the world is going to build a eCommerce app strictly with the DOM & XSLT??? The same is true of all the XML training tutorials on the web. But in all fairness all that other material just primed me for this book and the "grand schema" of things (pun intended). Creating XML apps is much more than understanding XML/XSLT syntax, it's a high level architecture which is more complex than many of the web apps out there today. It was finally this book, which has modeled and integrated all the diverse concepts, which has allowed me to get my head around "how do I create, integrate and manage all the components surrounding XML". This isn't a beginners book but rather one for the person who is looking to weave various application protocols together and make a serious step forward with building the next generation apps today. These apps take a tremendous pooling of knowledge and resources and this book will put you and your team on the right path with the architecture & technology.If you have some knowldege of XML & UML then this book will help you to take that to the next level of integration and more importantly, production. You don't just learn abstract "how-to's" but rather "how-to" in the context of a real project. Starting with assembling your team, working through UML models and transfering this into XML vocabularies and designing a "portal" from there. You then go through linking, validating and transforming your data and end up with a chapter on deployment options. What makes this so nice is that it all revolves around a single case study so you see how the overall process develops and flows.The companion website is an excellent source not only for the code and updates but for all manner of info pertaining to XMl & UML. Trust me... if you are into XML then you need it. This is THE book which will turn the tide for XML from industry hypeware into workable systems.