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Note: The following is an excerpt from the actual document. It is provided here as a connivence and is not authoritative. Refer to the original document as the authoritative reference.

The purpose of this International Standard is to specify the Systems Modeling Language (SysML), a general-purpose modeling language for systems engineering. Its intent is to specify the language so that systems engineering modelers may learn to apply and use SysML; modeling tool vendors may implement and support SysML; and both can provide feedback to improve future versions. Note that a definition of “system” and “systems engineering” can be found in ISO/IEC 15288.

SysML reuses a subset of UML 2.5 and provides additional extensions to address the requirements in UML for SE. SysML uses the UML 2.5 extension mechanisms as further elaborated in Clause 17 as the primary mechanism to specify the extensions to UML 2.5. This revision of SysML relies on several new features incorporated into UML 2.5. Any use of the term “UML 2” or “UML” in this specification, unless otherwise noted, will refer to UML 2.5 in general and the UML 2.5 specification in particular.

Since SysML uses UML 2.5 as its foundation, systems engineers modeling with SysML and software engineers modeling with UML 2.5 will be able to collaborate on models of software-intensive systems. This will improve communication among the various stakeholders who participate in the systems development process and promote interoperability among modeling tools. It is anticipated that SysML will be customized to model domain-specific applications, such as automotive, aerospace, communication, and information systems.

SysML is designed to provide simple but powerful constructs for modeling a wide range of systems engineering problems. It is particularly effective in specifying requirements, structure, behavior, allocations, and constraints on system properties to support engineering analysis. The language is intended to support multiple processes and methods such as structured, object-oriented, and others, but each methodology may impose additional constraints on how a construct or diagram kind may be used. This version of the language supports most, but not all, of the requirements of the UML for Systems Engineering RFP, as shown in the Requirements Traceability referenced by Annex F. These gaps are intended to be addressed in future versions of SysML as indicated in the matrix.