2012-11-17 Saturday - Software Modeling and Design

Over the last year or so I've been aggressively adding to my already extensive personal library (1200+ books) by visiting many thrift stores [frequently], and in particular, seeking out Friends of the Library type book sales.  Often adding 20-50 books in a weekend (often, for less than $20-$40 total).

For example, here's the 'treasure' from my last three book hunting expeditions:

Note: A very useful resource for finding local book sales: http://www.booksalefinder.com
[in case you may not be aware, supporting your local thrift stores is one way to directly help support local job creation in your neighborhood]

Since my reading interests are quite broad - the variety of books I've picked-up have spanned many different disciplines.  But, I'm always on the lookout for an interesting text that has some connection to my professional life as a solution architect.

A recent such acquisition: Hassan Gomaa's excellent  'Designing Concurrent, Distributed, and Real-Time Applications with UML' (published in 2000) - which I picked-up for about $1.00

NOTE:

Dr. Hassan Gomaa,
Department of Computer Science

Volgenau School of Engineering

George Mason University

http://mason.gmu.edu/~hgomaa/

http://mason.gmu.edu/~hgomaa/CourseSlides.html

I consider myself an advanced practitioner of UML - but often use a limited subset in my day-to-day architecture work.  I enjoyed the opportunity to do a refresher on some of the less-frequently-used aspects - and in particular, the concerns that are relevant to real-time modeling - by diving into Gomaa's book.

Most UML books tend to use trivial examples - and rarely spend much time on the real-time UML modeling aspects.  At 700+ pages, this is an excellent text for junior level developers to significantly deepen their UML modeling skills.

I must say that the book is well written and has weathered the passage of time quite well.





In fact, I've been so pleased with Gomaa's writing that I've added his 2011 follow-up text, 'Software Modeling and Design: UML, Use Cases, Patterns, and Software Architectures' to my future purchase list.