UML 2 For Dummies

The Web is a good source of information, but it’s not a perfect source. You’ll find three main problems with using the Web as a source of information:

• If it costs nothing, it may be worth nothing. The quality of the Web sites is notoriously uneven. Examine every Web site with a challenging eye. Is the information on this site accurate and useful? Not every one who publishes on the Web is an expert. This chapter helps you select trustworthy sites—but never suspend your judgment while surfing.

• Nothing’s where it used to be. The Web is ephemeral. Sites appear and disappear, change their names, or quickly get out of date. You may have to be a skilled sleuth to find the latest incarnation of a site.

• You can’t surf a million waves at once. The Web is so big that you’ll quickly be inundated with information. A simple search for UML on Google, www.google.com, results in over 1,390,000 hits.

With these limitations in mind, you may wonder why you should bother with the Web at all. Well, the Web’s advantages stem from the same properties as its disadvantages:

• The price is right. While the highest-quality material will be from traditional books, almost all material on the Web is free.

• Quick and up-to-date. Not only is it quicker to find a Web site than buying a book, the Web is often the only place to get up-to-the-minute material. In a fast-moving field like system development with UML, you’ll be able to hear about something first on the Web. (Of course, afterward you’ll probably want to buy the book.)

• Diversity of opinion and expression. The Web is so large that you’re more likely to find someone who has an answer for your specific question, or for your domain, or expressing a point of view similar to yours. That’s a big help when you’re doing something fairly different or have a problem understanding the standard examples.