Over the last 20 years or so, it has been rewarding to see the object-oriented model gain wide acceptance. It has grown from what was primarily an esoteric coder’s tool (think Smalltalk) into a useful method for the analysis and design of information systems. The latter is the focus of this new book by a Brazilian academic and consultant.

The text has 13 chapters, three of which are online only. After a brief throwaway introduction, two chapters discuss preliminary business modeling and high-level requirements, followed by an online chapter on use case-based planning and a print chapter on how to expand use cases.

Chapter 6 introduces conceptual modeling and generalization, specialization, and inheritance. These themes are expanded in the following chapters, which detail pattern modeling; functional modeling using object constraint language (OCL) and create, update, delete, retrieve (CRUD) contracts; and domain tier design. This discussion concludes with an online only chapter on code generation and a print chapter on testing. I found these two chapters to be superficial and unnecessary in a book focused on analysis and design.

The book concludes with an extensive chapter on interface design with the interaction flow modeling language (IFML), now in beta release from the Object Management Group. The last chapter is online only and covers data persistence. Its content is interesting, although I would have preferred it to be in the print edition. The coverage of IFML is a good introduction to this new technique that has seen little coverage elsewhere.

Each chapter ends with a few superficial questions that do not add much value. There are no exercises. The bibliography contains useful references, but is skimpy. For instance, it lacks Booch’s classic [1]. The text contains too little discussion of the people side of early stages of analysis, and ignores the utility of the class, reliance, collaboration approach that is so useful at this stage [2]. The index is decent; however, for some reason, it does not contain references to most names.

Better coverage of the unified modeling language (UML) may be available elsewhere [3,4], and it remains to be seen how IFML will gain acceptance in the field. In my view, this book will be of most utility to experienced practitioners looking to deepen their knowledge and technique. It will be useful as an academic course text if instructors create their own project assignments.