A Comparison of the Usability of Five MBSE Language/Tool Combinations By Wioletta Kowalczyk (Bsc BS MS, PPI SyEN Contributor)
A Comparison of the Usability of Five MBSE Language/Tool Combinations By Wioletta Kowalczyk (BSc BS MS, PPI SyEN Contributor) Copyright © by Wioletta Kowalczyk. All rights reserved. Authored for PPI SyEN.
Engineers and other problem solvers use logical modeling, often functional modeling, extensively in their work. The form of such modeling may be as basic as a MS Project Gantt Chart, or as sophisticated as an executable behavior model of a complex, technology-intensive system. Many different tools are in use – software and cloud services. Tools may use different languages, sometimes proprietory (specific to the tool), sometimes public domain like SysML 1.x – so, what is the ease of use these proprietary Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) languages versus the well known SysML 1.x MBSE language? Ease of use may be quantified by using a measure such as the number of steps or actions it takes to decompose a function in an item-flow decomposition, the number of information elements involved, and the number of diagrams. These terms are defined below. In this article, the parent function has two sub-functions. We have a function say F1, two sub-functions (F1.1 and F1.2) and 3 item flows (F1_in, F1.1_out/F1.2_in, and F1_out) - 6 elements in the resulting model. This article based on [2] provides a short comparison of the non-SysML tools: ArKItect and Capella versus SysML1.5 [1] tools: Enterprise Architect (EA), Cameos System Modeler (CSM) and Rational Rhapsody Architect (RRA). In order to to understand the comparison, the following key definitions are presented: • • •
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action: (not necessarily atomic, i.e. could involve multiple user steps) user action resulting in the creation, modification or suppression of an element or a diagram. element: (model) element (including link) that is created, modified or deleted by a user action in a diagram. diagram: (model) view that displays a set of elements and that is created, modified or deleted by a user action.
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