After our CIO read Mr. Reed's book, it became required reading for team members of a particular development project. One of our issues was that the team members had a range of experience in UML and Java spanning from novice to expert. We needed everyone to have the same foundation of understanding in order to move ahead with defining our project deliverables and coding standards. After everyone completed reading this book, we were able to reassemble and have productive discussions on what we needed to do going forward.

As a non-programmer and someone who is relatively new to UML, RUP and Java, I found Mr. Reed's book to be well written and concepts clearly explained. It was certainly an eye opener for not just me, but our entire team. In fact we have begun to refer to it as "The Book Of Reed"!

This is an excellent book for programmers new to Java, UML and Java architecture. This is not a complete book on UML, patterns, EJB or Java but that is not its intention. The author does an excellent job of taking the rational unified process and UML and breaking it down to the relevant artifacts and diagrams. It contains excellent examples and doesn't try to over simplify. I highly recommend this book to development teams that are beginning to embark on Java web applications from other programming languages.

My only warning is that if you are unfamiliar with basic Java patterns (session façade, controller), you may get a little lost. It helps to have a basic understanding of Java and OOP. The book does get into EJBs but not enough to start coding your own EJB application but you will get the big picture and that is the best way to view this book.

This book was required reading for a project that we are currently doing. I am managing a team with some developers new to Java but had extensive VB experience. They found that this book helped then "think in Java"

I supplemented my reading with other books like Mastering Enterprise Java Beans by Ed Roman and the Sun J2EE Core Patterns Book. There is a decent book called Advanced Case Modeling if you want to get a different view on use case designs.

I would like to add that the book uses a session façade controller for each use case. The book doesn't really stress the consequences of doing this. The definition of a use case is as quite broad. Some architects prefer fine-grained use cases to course-grained. This book has you using course-grained. This is important so that you don't end up with too many controllers which can translate to hundreds of session beans. Make sure that you develop your use cases in a course-grained manner to avoid this problem. In addition, the book's example uses value object creation at the entity bean level. This could be abstracted to a value bean assembler.

I am a professional developer trying to combine my Java knowledge with more recently acquired UML skills. When I first opened the book I was genuinely impressed with the clarity of thought and language. I have since read it from cover to cover and my respect for the author has only increased.
He takes a pragmatic view of the RUP focusing on 10 key artifacts (out of 109) and has turned my theoretical appreciation of UML into a practical development tool. I particularly liked his event frequency table and clean presentation of use cases. The book provides an easy to follow example containing enough detail to be real world without distracting from the key messages. The teaching style is excellent, reinforcing ideas and summarizing key points and I found the example code to be clear, helpful and focused.
In summary, I cannot recommend this book too highly for anyone intending to embark upon a Java development using UML. Read the outline. Buy the book. Enjoy learning.

The theme here is 'process' and round-trip engineering using a tool (Rose). Although it assumes knowledge of UML and Visual BASIC it spends some time introducing its OO aspects and how UML maps to VB. The focus of the book is the Synergy process that uses the UML notation and applied here in VB. Personally I believe that each developer or team should have their own process depending on the domain and type of project but nevertheless there are some great techniques to borrow from Synergy and add them to your own. In particular the discussion on use case analysis and the progression to class design from that is very good. Weaved throughout the chapters is the use of Rose for keeping code and design in synch so if you are not a Rose fun this might get in the way. Worth noting is that the case study is taken through the whole project life cycle stages and the climax is the translation of the same code/design of a standalone system to run in MTS and then a further iteration is described for giving the application an ASP web interface - excellent stuff if you are interested in Microsoft's component technologies.

This book is one of the most useful books I have ever owned. Buy it, read it and place it in your inventory next to the other classics on the top shelf because you will reference and recommend this one again and again.

Process and structure are increasingly important as VB rapidly moves into the backoffice of corporations and becomes the de facto development platform for more and more business critical applications. Couple this with the fact that the Microsoft-based technology landscape causes us to rethink our application domain on a daily basis and process and industry accepted approaches become an absolute necessity.

Mr. Reed outlines a pragmatic approach to using UML within a process (Synergy process) with VB development better than anyone else. The book covers UML techniques in the proper depth without making the reader muddle through pages of useless text. The example outlined in the book is solid and provides an understandable story anyone can follow and instantly apply to their own situation.

Mr. Reed's experience lends creditability to the concepts in the book and helps the reader understand how to apply these concepts. He distils the copious topics of UML and using a development process into a single book that would otherwise require the reader to work through several books in order to understand these topics.

Hopefully the next version will be in hardback in order to endure its years of use.

Visual Basic is the wild west of modern software development tools, supporting RAD (rapid application development) and seemingly promoting a ready, fire, aim approach to developing applications. UML, the Uniform Modeling Language, and a software process aren't always easy to use with VB, and most UML books take a high-level view that make it hard to apply to VB development.

Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML breaks ground in an area where I've seen no other book yet do a good job, applying UML to VB. UML is a complex design notation that works best with object oriented design and programming tools, but VB 6 is at best object-based. Reading most generic UML books requires, at the very least, an advanced degree in computer science, keeping it to the intellectual elite of the software world. The author has bridged this gap effectively, relating the various diagrams and tools in UML to VB applications, demonstrating how you can apply them to real applications. And relating terms and concepts in VB to those in UML is a big help as well.

This is a complex, in-depth book, and it would be easy to get lost in the conceptual discussions and sample project. But between the clearly marked process diagram used consistently throughout, goals and checkpoints that start and finish each chapter, and constant relating of new concepts to those covered before, the author helps the reader stay clearly focused on the big picture and which part is being discussed.

Rational Rose is used as the sample design tool throughout the book. This might annoy readers using other tools, but the Rose-specific discussions were light enough that you should be able learn the technique well enough to apply it with other tools. The author sometimes gets bogged down in a few too many step by step listings to accomplish a given task in VB. Anyone picking up this book had better have a pretty good feel for VB already, or will become quickly lost.

The one thing that mildly annoyed me is that the author introduces yet another design process methodology, his Synergy system. Synergy seems reasonable enough-I haven't yet given it a work out-but I'm not sure that the world needs another methodology.

I'm not sure that you could sit down, read this book, and emerge an effective design engineer for enterprise applications using VB. But if you have a good feel for what it takes to build robust applications, have some familiarity with software engineering concepts, and have struggled applying them to VB projects, the book provides an excellent bridge between VB and UML. Certainly the best I've seen so far, and applying the techniques are sure to improve your development projects.

Paul Reed novels always have an intimate feeling of San Francisco and a keen sense of time, and this latest captures familiar issues and emotions of the past decade. The narrator is no great hero and he knows it, but there is a quiet, understated, real-world heroism in his compassion and sense of duty toward others in his life. It's the sort of quality we often find in ourselves when things go wrong and our superficial concerns automatically give way to what counts. The characters in Verticle Intercourse are as vivid as friends and acquaintances passing on today's Castro Street, or in the neighborhood you know. Though entertaining, this novel is ambitious, and the real story is not the everyday drama but a community surviving after two decades of AIDS, and still putting trust in friendships and love. The ease of Reed's narrative fools you, the pace is quicker than you realize, and by the end you don't want to let go of these lives and their stories.

A very intimate book about a gay man living with AIDS. I found it realistic and close to home in a way much gay fiction is not. And a certain unresolvedness made it all the more realistic.

This is the best book by Paul Reed so far. I was truly blown away by the humanity, insight, and pure honesty of the characters and their lives. Rarely does a book in the "gay" genre delve into themes of aging in the community, or looks-ism, or the uncertainty of dating and all the pleasures and conflicts that brings. But not only are the characters intriguing, their stories are fascinating, and we can't wait to turn the page to see what happens next. Beyond this, the writing is exquisite. Reed is known already for his elegant prose, but in Vertical Intercourse, he has managed to grow beyond the elegiac poetry of his novel Longing and achieve something stylistically polished but that reads like a breeze, effortless. I don't know how he does it. This book should be a permanent part of every gay man's library. I can't recommend it highly enough.

This is not a bad introductory documentation book, but quite skimpy in the amount of information and examples it contains.
Not sure it is worth buying at that price. I bought it after reading the previous reviews - I think they overrated it!

After reading my colleague's comments I rushed out and purchased this book. I, too, am trained and certified in Information Mapping© and was impressed at how closely the approach in this book is aligned to that method. However, what I like most is the fact that this book can be used as guidance for a wider scope than just documenting software architectures because it shows how to organize your documentation requirements, develop clear documentation and manage the entire process from start to finish.

I also like the clearly articulated and illustrated advice about how to augment text with graphics, and how to select the views and associated graphics to document requirements, specifications and the finished architecture. An example of how this book goes beyond documenting just architectures is a project in which I was engaged two years ago. One of the major deliverables was a set of operations guides. While this is related to architecture with respect to how its used after it's in production, there were no books that fully described how to go about it in a coherent way. Using the advice and techniques in this book I could have greatly improved upon what I did produce. While I cannot change the past, you can be sure that I'll use this book to its fullest the next time I need to write ops guides, especially when it comes to showing component and connector views, and elements and relations.

If you do technical writing either professionally or as a part of your job get this book and keep it nearby. If you read and use the material you're ability to communicate will surely improve, and you'll be able to tailor your documentation to each segment of your audience (business and technical), as well as to clearly communicate information. You'll also learn much about managing the documentation process itself.

Since reading a fascinating document titled "CMU/SEI-2001-TN-010 - Documenting Software Architectures: Organization of Documentation Package" a year ago and discovering that the approximately 20-page document was the basis for a book I have patiently waited, and am delighted with how the book turned out.

First, this book stands out as one of the clearest descriptions of how to not only document architectures, but how to manage the documentation project. Second, this is not a dogmatic prescription for how to document, but instead gives a set of techniques and views that can be used singularly or in combination to produce documentation that meets the needs of all technical and business stakeholders.

When I read the brief predecessor to this book I liked the way different view types and styles were introduced, but was left to my own imagination and creativity to employ them based on scant descriptions. This book rectifies those gaps by providing comprehensive guidance on how to create each view type and when it's most appropriate for inclusion into the documentation project. I was also intrigued by the earlier document because it discussed 'information chunking', which is the basis for a technique in which I'm trained and certified called Information Mapping©. The book expands on the earlier work, and it turns out that the material is not only consistent with Information Mapping© at a high level, but also shares many core principles. To me this is another plus because it will introduce readers who have not benefited from formal Information Mapping© training to powerful and effective document design and development techniques.

Another strong point about this book is the attention paid to managing the documentation process - it's one thing to write clear documentation and quite another to manage a process where many writers contribute to the documentation. I also liked the illustration examples, which epitomize how to effectively portray technical detail, and the discussion of other methods of documenting architecture.

In my opinion this book should become the standard for developing and managing documentation. It belongs on the desk of every technical writer and on the bookshelf of every architect and designer. I waited a year for this book and it was well worth the wait.

Remembering the first, or the reinstatement of that first Lottery Draft was one of the most difficult times of my teenage years. We all had heard of a war and knew of even a few of our friends that had gone to serve and some that had died. Civics class was full of discussions and debate that paralleled those raging in our own Congress. It seemed so strange to be fighting a war when there was this huge debate on whether we should be involved or not. I met or knew few people that wanted to die somewhere in Southeast Asia that many had never even heard of or could even spell.

Paul Reed gives an honest and straightforward story of the events that led to his enlistment, training, and volunteering to go and fight in Vietnam. It's hard to imagine the reality of a life in the jungle for an entire year. If the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan's gutwrenching, muscle steeling attack on one awaiting there own demise is the only experience you can call on to imagine what war is about, then this first hand description is available. It's not Homer or Shakespeare, but a straightforward accounting by a well trained boy and his observations as a soldier.

I did not want to go to Vietnam. I did not want to fight somewhere or die somewhere that could not be agreed on by a government that rules us all. We should have gone to win or not gone. Those that went, either by draft or by conviction, are to be commended not only for their bravery, but for their sense of duty and the fact that they merely obeyed the call of their country. Their heroism was displayed when they put the uniform on and put themselves in harms way. Not that they showed some action in duties "above and beyond", but that they were there, they were ready, while those of us, myself included, holding lottery number 311 did not have to go at all. I was merely lucky.

I cannot imagine the carnage of war or the ability to remove those sights and sounds from my mind. I do not think it can be done. Veterans must be much stronger than those of us who stayed behind, to be able to cope with their lives after such a war and to go on as if it did not happen. Paul Reed's account describes the process by which he chose to open his eyes and see the humanity of his enemy through a captured diary and to allow the forgiveness of our Creator to come into his life and that of Nguyen van Nghia and extend the gift of freedom to those of us who did not go and fight those terrible battles in that terrible war.

The poetry of the diary is not complex, but it has been translated. What may rhyme in English or structurally be wonderful is sometimes lost when translated into other tongues. In this case, what was written in Vietnamese may lose something in its translation into English, but the message comes through beautifully.Nguyen van Nghia's words speak for themselves:

Love bears no grudge ... Do not rush love in order to enjoy it... Handle love with care... Calm yourself, listen to the world speak... Show the way for the younger generation...

For this person that stayed behind, Kontum Diary showed me for the first time that a mistake had been made in entering that war. Those that died did not die in vain, for they answered their country's call. For those us of who did not or did not have to, I am, and we should all be eternally grateful. Read this with book with an open mind and see if you too find it a bit easier to exclude the prejudice, hatred, and the stupidity from our lives that make it so difficult to grow and become what it is that we desire to be.

As a fellow Vietnam veteran, I found Paul Reed's diary memorable and moving. All of us should be thankful his mother saved his keepsakes which motivated Paul Reed to follow his heart and reconcile not only with the man who wrote the diary but also with himself. The book is well written and reflects the author's courage in facing an incendiary time in his life and the life of the nation. His book contributes to the healing process.

The Kontum Diary was the beginning of a journey for me. Reading about Paul's experience in Viet Nam and the years that followed touched a deep chord inside. My first husband died young after his own tour of duty there in the sixties. He was exposed to agent orange which exaserbated the heart attack which eventually killed him. He also suffered from post traumatic stress syndrom, although it didn't have a name then. The Kontum Diary inspired me to write a song which, for me, was a catharsis, a way that I could personalize what I had read in Paul's book and understand what my husband had struggled with. I could, like Paul, let go of the pain and become healed. This is a book that goes far beyond the documentary of two men's lives and the way they came to bury their swords. It is an inspirational story of hope and sends a very strong message about letting go of prejudice and fear and embracing a path of love and friendship.

I feel that it behooves anyone with impeccable taste to seek out and listen to the essential recordings of the subject of this book. Paul Weller is a remarkable songwriter, a fine musician and an involuntary icon. Reed's product of research articulately underscores these points and also sheds light on other attributes. As an American, it's tough to find other "enlightened" individuals-however, those who have been exposed to Weller's body of work have subsequnetly become converts. In short, if you consider yourself a well-versed appreciator of excellent contemperary music and haven't heard of Paul Weller, I highly recommend that you seek out his recordings and read books like this one.

When a man in one of 'the dirtiest businesses' (copyright Ian Brown) around, manages to come out the other end of 20-odd years of it, after three sucessful incarnations, countless hit singles and albums, and still has his integrity intact, what better subject for a bio can you get.

As for the book, the author remains unobtrusive in the story telling, which helps no end (see the Stone Roses bio) in the reading.

A great (continuing) story, parts of which have been well told before (A Beat Concerto, Mr Cool's Dream), but sucessfully well told again.

From the moment I picked this book up, I couldn't put it down again (which was hard because it's really heavy). It's packed with more detail than an encyclopedia and is an absolute must for any Weller fan. Reed's writing talents are clear and focused, his use of descriptive imagery immaculate and the research that went into this book is exemplary. Though Weller doesn't talk directly to the author, the book is incredibly well written and includes hundreds of quotes here from friends, family and the Modfather himself to enrich and complement Reed's excellent biography. There's not much more I can say except go out and buy it!

I ordered this book sight unseen. It was disappointing for a primary care person who needs a reference to common therapies for common conditions. A lack of diagrams and explanation of physical therapy modalities that would be useful to patients is unfortunate. It covers a lot of ground but in a very cursory way. The assessment and treatment sections are sizeable lists of test and maneuvers with with no explanation of what each one is. It may well be a fine resource for a physical therapist, but I wouldn't recommend it to a primary care provider. I ended up returning the copy I ordered.

I'm sorry to hear that this book was a disappointment to one of the reviewers as he or she did not feel it was appropriate to use for laypersons...but it was not intended for that. I have used this book in the clinic during one of my internships and intend on purchasing it soon. It has a lot of useful information that a PT can keep right at their finger tips. I highly recommend this book and am looking forward to having my own copy.

This is a wonderful guide for use in the clinic setting. It is a quick and easy reference for a specific ailment or for qiick treatment ideas. Everyone that sees this book wants one.

An excellent analysis of how the Justices of the Supreme Court decide whether or not a law (created by Congress or the States) is valid or not. More than just a compilation of majority, concurring and dissenting opinions, this book looks at why the decisions were made, not just what the decisions were. Well worth the money and a fine addition to the library of anyone interested in law or the legislative process.

It takes a ... what? It takes more than this book recognizes to improve education. The rhetoric here implies that the so-called "reform" movement is the way to cure school ills. To most teachers, however, this is simply another year's bureaucratic fad to morph educators into paper pushers. Although I found several insights here, and detailed information on six inner-city school districts, I was somewhat amazed by two important omissions: teachers and students. Teacher unions were trivialized by the suggestion that each little school decide, on their own, if they want to unionize.The writer recommends "hiring halls" for teachers, putting us on a level with farm workers and factory hands. This writing shows absolutely no understanding about why teachers need unions or how such organizations originated.

This writer clearly identifies a target audience -- mayors, civic leaders and school board members. By decision, it excludes teachers and students. It's sad to think -- and I've seen this happen -- that ivory tower bureaucrarts actually make decisions based on this type of dubious theory rather than getting down in the trenches with the reality of the classroom.

Content here is peppered with educratic jargon which twists other terminology into bastardized educational theories. School "incubators" make me think of premature babies."Real dollar budgets" make me wonder if bureaucrats are playing Monopoly with our taxes. "CEO Strong Schools strategy" pretends that a principal, who is middle management, is a CEO. Get real. The only CEO in the school district is the superintendent who is hired by an elected school board.

This book, to it's credit, recognizes the inability of reform to reform anything (last paragraph, page 84). Any good book offers new insights and "policy churn" gets my prize here. Teachers are jaded by bandwagon bureaucrats who recycle new versions of old ideas, one after another, never saying, "stop this" or "drop that."

Hillary Clinton quotes the African proverb, "It Takes a Village." This book spins the idea into, "a city." I'm waiting for the next trendy realization for someone to discover that, "It takes a teacher."