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re: Is there a language to define (state) the generic structure of systems? (E.g., all systems at a company must have a certain structure...)

A dumb question perhaps… So far, I have used the UML / SysML graphic modeling language to model (define ?) ‘actual’ SW object structures / systems.

But what if I want to define (make a statement of definition of) a generic system structure?

E.g., I want to define that all systems at my company must comprise one “system” object, where “system” comprises one or more “subsystem” objects. And so on…

Can I do that in UML or SysML? UML or SysML does not seem appropriate (because they immediately label everything as a class or a block).

Maybe there is a different language for that? (Last time I needed to do something like this, I used Visio…)

Maybe that I need the Entity Relationship Language?

Thanks Avi

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    Have you thought over creating a profile for your needs? Commented Dec 26, 2022 at 9:29
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    "A system consists of sub systems". Sounds quite trivial. Do you need a modeling language for this? Actually, the systems modeling language already contains all you need. It doesn't call it "system" though. A Block that has sub blocks is a system. Commented Jan 2, 2023 at 10:09

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This is what a composite structure diagram or internal block diagram is for! Such a diagram defines more-specific types for properties that refer to things that must be connected in a particular way.

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Maybe I was not clear. I will have another go. I am asking how to draw a diagram that is more generic (i.e., than blocks) - and not asking how to draw less generic (more-specific, as you say). (So you answered the opposite of what I am asking, to the best of my understanding.) To try to clarify: the block diagram constructs would be fine for this particular purpose, but I do not want «block» stereotype to appear on blocks. Rather, instead, I would want to be able to define a «system» stereotype and a «subsystem» stereotype.
But maybe my problem is I don't know my SysML platform (Sparx EA) well enough (or SysML well enough, for that matter). Maybe EA/SysML offers the ability to define new element types , like «system» and «subsystem». And so the diagram will display «system» in the defined elements, rather than «block».
Why do you need to extend the language to express yourself? What is a specific example of a system in your mind?
That's the whole point. UML/SysML describes concrete systems - well at least concrete definitions - where the blocks/components (or block/component types, to be maybe more exact) have known given names. Whereas what I want to do is to describe in general what all systems must look like at my X company. E.g., each component must have exactly one local data store, and input interface, an output interface, and at least one sub-module - or something like that. Maybe I should be using entity relationship diagrams (ERD)?
Maybe later I will add an example diagram using ERD (or Visio...). (How do you upload an image to a stackoverflow question ? Do I have to first host the image on a 3rd party site image storage? The last time I did this on stackoverflow was ages ago.)
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