It's Only Software Development
Building Web Applications with UML
By Jim Conallen
Addison-Wesley, 2000, 300pp.
$34.95
By Eugene Eric Kim
About five years ago, programmers began paying very close attention to the World Wide Web. Not only was there a lot of money to be made, but the Web was something fresh and exciting in a community often perceived as staid and boring. Cynics noted that the Web was only a client-server system, and technically was just another form of software development. Nevertheless, many programmers jumped on the Webwagon in search of innovative and enriching challenges.
Strangely enough, the cynics were right. Building Web applications is just another form of software development. However, in some ways, the Web has spurred what years of evangelizing by software methodologists could not: the whole-hearted embrace of good development practices. This is largely the result of necessity. Because Web applications often depend on a range of specialists, from graphic designers to database experts, and because Internet time has compressed product cycles, a project's success is often dictated by how effectively its team works together.
Thanks to this phenomenon, it was only natural that some of the best software design and methodology ideas would eventually end up in the hands of Web developers. Jim Conallen describes one of the more important tools, Unified Modeling Language (UML), in Building Web Applications with UML.
Express Yourself
UML is a graphical notation for expressing all things related to software design, including requirements, flow charts, and class diagrams.
