Sdl Formal Object-Oriented Language for Communicating Systems

Anyone looking for a comprehensive introduction to SDL will benefit from this book. More advanced users should perhaps create models in SDL tool or reference many available papers and case studies that use SDL to better understand and learn the language. One cannot become an expert in modeling language by reading books alone, although this book will provide a quick start leaving it up to the reader to advance their skills through practice SDL is a viable Object Oriented language, and it's heavy adoption in telecommunication, especially wireless systems, is enough testament to is continued success. As a domain-specific modeling language for protocol-intensive systems SDL continue to overshadow the rival, non-domain modeling languages. SDL, with its Platform Independent notation also supports the true spirit of Driven Architecture (MDA)

I know the authors well, as they also participated in the ITU study group for methods and languages. I am also the co-author of an another book on SDL: Systems Engineering Using SDL-92.This title is a fair introduction to SDL covered by the SDL-92 standard with the Addendum of 1996. A new standard, SDL-2000, is expected to be approved in November 1999, and some of this book will then be out of date, especially as tool support for SDL-2000 becomes widely available. However, until there is another introductory book for SDL-2000 or an update to this one, then this book or Systems Engineering Using SDL-92 remain the best alternatives.This book does not go into in depth detail on all aspects of SDL. For example, it does not describe what is/is not allowed in an operator diagram. Nor does it attempt to cover methodology.Though SDL is almost always used as a graphical language, this book also covers the textual form of the language. Therefore SDL appears more complex than it is in reality, and the book longer than it need be.There are several examples in the book, but I am not convinced they are as effective as they could be in highlighting the various features of SDL. In particular, the chapter on protocol specification could be omitted. Though this is an interesting subject in its own right, the focus of the rest of the book is on the SDL language rather than a specific application domain.I would (of course) recommend the book that I co-authored in preference to this one, but if your budget runs to it, buy both as they are quite different. The alternative book gives more detail and is longer - you pay more but you get more.