Large-Scale Software Architecture- A Practical Guide using UML--160- Description:

Large-Scale Software Architecture: A Practical Guide using UML  review:
5 stars (Practical, thorough and accessible) - [Review duplicated from Amazon.co.uk]



Jeff Garland and Richard Anthony have written a very practical and accessible explanation of the process of designing and describing the software architecture for a large information system. All of the major architectural structures are covered and the depth of experience of the authors is evident from the solid, practical advice given throughout. There is also a huge amount of practical advice as to how architectural structures can be described using UML, which is particularly valuable.



The only significant criticism I've have is that they don't talk about the quality properties of the architecture all that explicitly. The focus in most of the book is about capturing architectural structures rather than talking about the required architectural qualities that led to the structures being selected. The reader is left to discern this for themselves.



This said though, I'd still recommend the book to any practicing information systems architect.
5 stars (Excellent guide to designing large software systems) - This book presents a very practical guide to designing and developing large-scale software systems. I've been involved in a number of large-scale projects and this is the first book I've found that includes many of the things you usually find out the hard way. Things like how to effectively communicate the design to the team, how to manage iterations and how to document designs and changes to the design.



Since the topic is large-scale systems, the book focuses more on techniques than on specific examples, but it more than makes up for that by providing practical tips and recommended reading references. If you are leading a software development team or plan to, this book will help you on a very practical level.
5 stars (Excellent ref. on communicating large-scale software design) - An excellent reference on what UML diagrams to use to capture the achitecture of a large software project. And this isn't based on the authors' ivory-tower opinions, but on their actual experience of using these diagrams in the real world. We have since used their approach to successfully capture (and thereby communicate to others) the architecture of software projects at our company.The writing style is a bit dry (there are no humorous anecdotes), but this is more than made up for by being concise.The book also includes an excellent primer of the various roles a software architect (and other software managers) should take within a large project.