What's new in SysML 1.6?
Anyone involved with MBSE will be familiar with SysML. Version 1.6 was released in December, bringing a few useful new features.
The following is a brief summary of the new products. A slightly longer one can be found in the oose blog, which is well worth reading, written by Tim Weilkiens. You can also find specific examples with screenshots there. Tim also has a English summary created.
Evolution instead of revolution
Version 1.6 brings a handful of minor changes, such as adapted text formatting, identifiers or spellings, but these do not change the actual content. This is not surprising, as the OMG is working at full speed on version 2.0 of SysML. This is also regularly reported in the oose blog (and important news here, of course).
One of the smaller improvements is that the SysML specification now includes many framework conditions in the Object Constraint Language (OCL). This is certainly more important for tool manufacturers than for the user.
Part properties of a block without associations
This change will make work easier for many: users are often not interested in block definition diagrams (BDD) but simply want to know which parts the system consists of (IBD). This change makes the association optional, which makes work easier and also simplifies the model.
Property-specific types
In the oose blog, Tim Weilkins uses an illustrative example to explain what property-specific types are: This is an implicit type assignment that comes about through the association with an object (and disappears again when the association is broken). This makes it possible, for example, to create properties that only exist in a specific context.
The property-specific types are not new, but they have been made a little more user-friendly. The example in the blog is plausible, but to me this seems like a very exotic feature that only a few users need.
Conjugated ports
Interface modeling is an important application of SysML - after all, interfaces often cause problems in practice. Interfaces are usually not symmetrical, so a port needs a conjugated Interface - A lock is not opened with a second lock, but with a key.
SysML improves the situation by introducing conjugate interface blocks.
When is SysML 2.0 coming?
Both in the English as well as German Tim's blog article, discussions have unfolded that show that many things in SysML 1.x are not optimal and cannot be sustainably corrected within the given framework. This is precisely the reason why the SysML 2.0 is being worked on.
The question is, of course, when will SysML 2.0 be released? There is no official date, but the OMG process suggests that it will be the end of 2022 at the earliest. And when the first tools is the next question.
Nevertheless, to master the complexity of modern systems we need modeling, and SysML is in a good position to become the modeling language of choice.
Photo by Vadim Sherbakov on Unsplash
