Re: Usefulness of UML?

From: Xavier Pacheco (xavier_at__nospam_xapware.com)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: 24 Mar 2005 06:36:41 -0800

I use UML primarily as a means of communicating with my team. It helps
to draw something on a white board using a language standard that
everybody understands. UML can be viewed as one of the disciplines that
developers ought to understand as part of their practice. This is
similar to how electricians use schematics, architects use cad
drawings, musicians use notation, and doctors use scribble.

As one person stated here, UML is simple to use. However, I agree that
consultants and people in general tend to complicate it.

UML is not the panacea for succeeding developing software.

Knowing UML does not help in designing software. It merely helps in
documenting designs. (Just like knowing how to read/write music does
not help you to write a song).

UML can save time/cost provided diagrams are kept up to date and
provided that the designs need to be referenced. I find this to be true
more so for sequence and state diagrams than I do for static
representation of the design.

Does it improve code quality: No, it has nothing to do with code
quality. One can use UML to document a horrible design. Code quality is
a factor of the experience, talent and care of the developer/designer.

>> Do you use UML tools in the planning phase <<

Yes. But not in-depth, mostly for communication and initial
documentation.

>> or for reverse- engineering poorly legible source code? <<

I try to run from poorly legible source code.

Related to your question, however, is one of my pet-peeves (and more
important to me than UML). I cannot for the life of me understand why
somebody would not use E-R diagrams when designing databases. I have
on numerous occasions dealt with clients that drop into Enterprise
Manager, or IBConsole and simply create databases. It's so much easier
to understand the data model when looking at a picture of it, rather
than a list of tables. Man, this is annoying.

 -x 

-- 
Xavier Pacheco
Xapware Technologies Inc
manage your projects: www.xapware.com/ActiveFocus.htm
the blog: www.xavierpacheco.com/xlog
the book: www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324431//xavierpacheco-20

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