SCEA Preparation-UML

[Gurunath Dharmar]

Hi All,
I am planning to do SCEA certification, i want to become an architect and hoping that this certification will be best initial step towards it...
Please throw some light on UML and its impact on this certification.

=>I have never used UML before and planning to read martinfowler's UML(2.0) Distilled book and do some groundwork...
=>Any freeware very useful to draw UML? any links to download???
=> Any inputs regarding "UML Complaince"?

Please provide your valuable suggestions.....

[Yegor Bugayenko]

Very strange to see that you have all those certifications (in your signature) and have never been using UML. How do you communicate with your peer programmers, architects, designers?

My suggestion is to start from real-life business cases. Start to organize and discipline your communications with others in the projects you're woking on. Start using UML in your life, then read books to polish your skills and experience. Without real-life experience your academic UML knowledge won't worth anything.

[Sharma Ashutosh]

You can try Astah(previously known as Jude) :
http://astah.change-vision.com/en/product/astah-community.html

Apart from Martin Fowler book, I will suggest UML for Dummies book-it's nice.