Book excerpt: The author of Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML (Addison-Wesley, 2000), a consultant on object-oriented distributed systems, presents a large-scale application to explain the lifecycle of building robust Java applications with the Unified Modeling Language using Rational's Software's Unified Plan. Reed also makes a short detour into his Synergy Process. Appends material on the Unified Plan and the BEA WebLogic application server. Assumes programmers' knowledge of Java and a willingness to evolve past a cavalier attitude toward project planning.