OMG Announces Adoption of the Systems Modeling Language ; Extends OMG's Unified Modeling Language for Systems Engineering

Business Wire, July 6, 2006

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- The Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)) today announced the adoption of the OMG Systems Modeling Language (OMG SysML(TM)). SysML is a general-purpose graphical modeling language for specifying, analyzing, designing, and verifying complex systems that may include hardware, software, information, personnel, procedures, and facilities. Visit the official OMG SysML site at http://www.omgsysml.org for information on SysML and quotes from supporting vendors and end users.

The OMG and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) collaborated on the UML(R) for Systems Engineering standardization process to extend UML to support the needs of the systems engineering community. The resulting SysML specification represents a subset of UML(R) 2.0 with extensions needed to satisfy the requirements of systems engineers. The language provides graphical representations with a semantic foundation for modeling system requirements, behavior, and structure, and supports integration with a broad range of engineering analysis. In addition to leveraging the Model Driven Architecture(R) and the Unified Modeling Language(TM), the SysML standard uses the OMG's XML Metadata Interchange (XMI(R)) to exchange modeling data between tools, and is also intended to be compatible with the evolving ISO 10303-233 systems engineering data interchange standard.

"The successful collaboration with INCOSE to create the new SysML language shows the capabilities of the Model Driven Architecture to apply beyond its initial application to software. The ability to extend UML to address complex systems analysis shows how powerful a model-driven approach can be," said Dr. Richard Soley, chairman and CEO, OMG. "The combination of early vendor implementations of the new SysML standard (some of which are already available) and the collaboration with the world's largest professional systems engineering society guarantee speedy uptake of this important standard."

"SysML adoption by the OMG is a critical step towards institutionalizing a model driven approach for systems engineering. A standard modeling language for systems engineering has the potential to significantly improve communications among the development team, improve tool interoperability, and enhance our ability to manage system complexity," said Sanford Friedenthal from Lockheed Martin, who chaired the SysML Industry Team.

"IBM sees SysML as an important standard for systems engineering. Our customers and partners will be able to immediately gain value from the SysML standard and its ability to help govern the process of system engineering," said Sridhar Iyengar, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Software Group, and member of the OMG Board of Directors. "SysML is a testament to the community that contributes to and advances UML and its common semantic foundation."

"The adoption of SysML is a critical milestone for the systems engineering community. In addition to the value that SysML will provide to our practitioners, the collaborative effort between INCOSE and the OMG provides a foundation that will help to shape future systems engineering standards," said Paul Robitaille, president, INCOSE.

SysML Technical Overview

Like UML, on which it is based, SysML uses a variety of diagrams with a semantic foundation to represent complex systems. SysML modifies some existing UML constructs and adds specialized constructs to address the unique systems engineering requirements.

--The "block" is the basic unit of structure in SysML and can be used to represent hardware, software, facilities, personnel, or any other system element.

--The behavior diagrams include the activity diagram, sequence diagram, state machine diagram and use case diagram. SysML extends activities to represent continuous flows and support enhanced functional flow block diagrams.

--SysML includes a new graphical construct to represent text-based requirements and relate them to other model elements. This capability provides a bridge between the typical requirements management tools and the system models.

--The parametric diagram is a new SysML capability to model constraints on system property values such as performance, reliability, and mass properties, and serves as a means to integrate the specification and design models with engineering analysis models.

--SysML also includes an allocation relationship to represent various types of allocation, including allocation of functions to components, allocation of logical to physical components, and allocation of software to hardware.

Several SysML tool implementations are available or under development. For more information on SysML, please visit http://www.omgsysml.org.

About The OMG

With well-established standards covering systems and software from design and development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the key to successful IT and system development. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for the MDA(R), include the Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(R)), the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM(TM)) and other enterprise modeling standards. CORBA(R), the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments running today. Headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, the Object Management Group is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org.