Business Modeling With UML: Business Patterns at Work

From the authors of UML Toolkit comes a nuts-and-bolts guide for applying UML's vast capabilities to business systems.

To perform effective business modeling and develop a successful information system, you need a reliable modeling language that allows you to establish the necessary components and satisfy all of management's concerns. You need UML. With its eagerly anticipated new set of business extensions and techniques, UML is the premiere language for both traditional business modeling and the later stages of analysis and design. Finally, only one modeling language is needed for every phase of project development.

This invaluable book, the first of its kind, provides in-depth guidance on business modeling as well as discussions of how patterns, business objects, business rules, CORBA, COM, and Java all fit in to help improve every stage of object-oriented software development.

UML (Unified Modeling Language) is a drawing tool to create "blueprints" for object-oriented systems. It has been officially adopted by the OMG. Think of UML as the AutoCAD of the computer industry. Where AutoCAD is used to create architectural blueprints for buildings, UML is used to diagram blueprints of object-oriented computer systems. Business Modeling is the first phase of software development with UML, in which business concerns are clearly outlined so that an information system with the appropriate Business Objects may be developed.

Topics covered: Business modeling basics, UML notation and Erickson-Penker Business Extensions, class diagrams and powertypes, object diagrams, statecharts, activity diagrams and swimlanes, sequence and collaboration diagrams, collaboration and use case diagrams, component and deployment diagrams, stereotypes, business architectures, business processes, resources, goals, business rules, Object Constraint Language (OCL) and collections, business views and patterns, business goal allocation, business goal decomposition, business goal-problem, and software architectures

Following up on their bestselling book, UML Toolkit, Hans-Erik Eriksson and Magnus Penker now provide expert guidance on how to use UML to model your business systems. In this informative book, key business modeling concepts are presented, including how to define Business Rules with UML's Object Constraint Language (OCL) and how to use business models with use cases. The authors then provide 26 valuable Business Patterns along with an e-business case study that utilizes the techniques and patterns discussed in the book.

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Until now, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been primarily used to design software, but should you use it to model your entire business as well? That's the intriguing argument of Business Modeling with UML, a text that combines leading-edge enhancements to UML with some solid thinking about business. Written for any manager with some technical background, this book looks at the possibilities of UML used to model entire organizations.

The book makes a strong case for the advantages of modeling businesses in UML. With models, an organization can provide better software, define and implement new goals, and even decide whether to outsource certain operations. The Erickson-Penker Business Extensions for UML, invented by the authors and presented within the text, permit UML to document the entire business enterprise. This book shows how to model businesses, from business architecture to processes, business rules, and goals. Short case studies--for Web-centric and more traditional companies--are used to illustrate key concepts here.

Later sections of the book will perhaps take a little more background in software engineering to appreciate fully as the book presents a handful of business patterns, which offer reusable solutions to common problems (just like software patterns). The authors also look at how to leverage a business model to create better software.

In engineering, a new car is modeled and thoroughly tested on a computer before any physical prototype is ever built. As the authors point out, a business that has accurate models can test out new ideas cheaply and then adapt to changing market conditions quickly. This title makes a case that UML--a tool traditionally used by software developers--is ready to tackle the job. Read this notably informative and intelligent book to see the possible benefits of business modeling in UML for your organization. --Richard Dragan