SysML – an Assessment

UML 2 is an extensive language offering support for multiple views on a system and for modeling a wide variety of systems. There are 13 standard views, or diagrams, each with its own dedicated perspective, strengths and weaknesses. A system can be described using several views; however, a single view does only describe a particular part / perspective of the system. A brief overview of each view is presented below. A complete overview is available in standard UML
reference books, e.g. (Pender, 2003) or (Eriksson et al., 2004):
• Class diagram, the Class is the core concepts of object-oriented languages. From a computer science point of view a class is an abstract data type coupled with operations for manipulating the data held by the type. The class diagram is the mechanism for displaying classes and relationships among classes, thus providing a view on the static elements of a software system.
• Package diagram, in UML the Package concept provides the mechanism for logically partitioning a large model of a system into smaller manageable parts, e.g., subsystems. The Package diagram primarily supports model management, it allows for capturing relationships between packages, e.g. for stating that elements of a package are used within another package.
• Object diagram, supports the creation of examples (object instances) based on a class diagram. The diagram type is primarily valuable for identification of object relationships and for the definition of test cases.