Excerpt
There have been many changes for us and for the UML since the first edition was released in September 1998. The book has changed to stay current. The material in the first edition is also in the second edition, but you may find it in a new location. We moved the engineering-oriented material to the end of the book, and the business-oriented material to the beginning. This should make it easier for different audiences to find the material that interests them.
We updated the book to UML 1.3. A lot of the changes are in Chapters 3 and 4 because that is where we described most of the notation. The uses relationship became two relationships in UML 1.3, include and generalization. The extends relationship became extend. In both cases the notation changed as well. The definition of scenarios changed a bit too. What we used to call scenarios are now called paths.
We have added some new material that we found useful and important. Chapter 6 is a new chapter on setting the level of detail in use cases. This includes information on business process-level use cases and maintaining traceability between use cases at different levels of detail. Chapter 7, Documenting Use Cases, includes some ideas on handling login and CRUD (create, read, update, delete) in use cases. Chapter 8, Reviews, has a new section on common mistakes we have seen and how to fix them. We have included more information on sequence diagrams in Chapters 5 and 9.
There have been changes for me and Jason as well. Jason left Octel and is now a staff engineer at Cadence Design Systems. I liked having my own business, but didn't like the bookkeeping, so I took a job running the OO division of Andrews Technology, Inc. We still have Wyyzzk and Jason does some weekend consulting for that business. Things even changed on the publishing side. Addison-Wesley is now part of Pearson Education, and we have a whole new team managing the Object Technology series. They have been wonderful to work with and made the transition as smooth as possible.
One question we get asked a lot is: What do the footprints and people talking icons mean? The footprints mark major steps in the process. The people talking appear next to the storyline.
Thank you for all the e-mail about the book. We don't always get a chance to reply, but we have read all your letters and hope we have answered most of your questions in this second edition. Geri Schneider Winters
Santa Clara, California
0201708531P04062001