Kiseldalens' List of Object & Component Tech Links
Which level of detail? UML tool? Process - heavy, light, agile? Which path to components? What about databases? The world-standard Unified Modeling Language can be used with any up-to-date process or tool, whereas knowledge of UML itself is, in contrast, crucial in any of them. The UML being a wide "Swedish table" of useful ingredients, quite many tools are niche tools. Yet, many projects choose tools originally intended for somebody else... IT-developing enterprises of today shall fine-tune their processes and strategies in the light of components. I'm advocating a practical low-overhead approach based on core standard UML. Some of these links may facilitate the transition for your team, illustrating that the UML, the Model Driven Architecture and myself are vendor-independent; also, note the list-of-links links (page bottom).

Tool links (UML):

Select Business Solutions' Component Factory
Telelogic’s product pages (Modeller is now for free)
Steve Mellor/Mentor Graphics's UML pages
IBM Rational's tool pages (are constantly being moved around...)
Borland's Together pages
Visual Object's low-cost tools (Visual UML)
Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect pages
Magic Draw's pages
Visual Paradigm's UML pages
Sun Java Studio Enterprise pages (containing a free UML modeller)


Book links

A component-based process is not achieved by mechanically following a handbook. It has to be fine-tuned for years, as has been done in more mature industries. I like catalyzing and guiding this transition. Beware of books with too much notation (like 4 ways of depicting a Composition relationship - while you need exactly 1 in practice). Look for books with compact checklists, hints, patterns, real-life systems, and for vendors of ready-made component frameworks.

- Basic UML

My light book (with Barry McGibbon), a starter for all stakeholders but developers.
UML Xtra-Light: How to Specify Your SW Requirements, ISBN 0-521-892422
My favorite on advanced OO and on UML for programmers is Fowler's award winning lean one (much substance on few pages, try to beat it if you can) -
UML Distilled, 3rd edition, ISBN 0-321-19368-7

- UML in business systems, including databases, I still prefer several chapters of this classic -
Component Based Development for Enterprise Systems, ISBN 0-521-64999 4

- on problem patterns before choosing a solution
Michael A. Jackson still going strong, provided you’re not too pedantic about notations (I wouldn't mind UML 2 diagrams to replace non-standard ones, and clear distinctions in the text between «interface» and «boundary» and «facade»). The (rather cross-tier) examples go together well with CBD, components are easily imaginable here. No matter if you’re going to design, assemble or buy, it helps your initial understanding of your problem. Michael has also done research into an architectural mapping from his problem frames onto frame-customized platforms.
Problem Frames: Analyzing and Structuring Software Development Problems, ISBN: 0-201-59627-X

- UML for RT, embedded etc. :
Doing Hard Time, by Bruce Powel Douglass, ISBN 0-201-49837 5
Executable UML: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture, by Steve Mellor, ISBN 0-201-74804-5

- UML for knowledge/logic-intensive systems
I suggest the high-level language of your knowledge-tool, xor (as opposed to a plain "or") the UML OCL:
The Object Constraint Language - Getting Your Models Ready for MDA, by Warmer & Kleppe, ISBN 0-201-37940-6
- even today, specs often miss on deceptive "details" of logic that turn out to be crucial down the road (such as the distinctions or-xor, implication-equivalence, exists-forAll etc.). There's are even some people in the OMG trying to make business rules more visual. If your system is supposed to process a complex business logic, natural language alone is never the easy street it seemed to be in the first place. For tool vendors internally, the UML’s OCL also fits into metamodels. For software architects and testers, it standardizes detailed definitions of interfaces and the checks at those interfaces, in terms of preconditions and postconditions of operations without having the methods (algorithms) yet.

List-of-links pages (and similar):

Patterns’ home pages (Aamod Sane & Co) on new patterns, conferences, books and much more UML-resource-page, by the Object Management Group (OMG)
Object Management Group Home page (UML, and many more standards)