A System Composer™architecturerepresents a system of components and how they interface with each other structurally and behaviorally. You can represent specific architectures using alternate views.

Different types of architectures describe different aspects of systems:

A System Composermodelis the file that contains architectural information, including components, ports, connectors, interfaces, and behaviors.

Perform operations on a model:

A System Composer model is stored as an SLX file.

Acomponentis a nontrivial, nearly independent, and replaceable part of a system that fulfills a clear function in the context of an architecture. A component defines an architectural element, such as a function, a system, hardware, software, or other conceptual entity. A component can also be a subsystem or subfunction.

Represented as a block, a component is a part of an architecture model that can be separated into reusable artifacts.

Aportis a node on a component or architecture that represents a point of interaction with its environment. A port permits the flow of information to and from other components or systems.

There are different types of ports:

Connectorsare lines that provide connections between ports. Connectors describe how information flows between components or architectures.

A connector allows two components to interact without defining the nature of the interaction. Set an interface on a port to define how the components interact.

Astereotypeis a custom extension of the modeling language. Stereotypes provide a mechanism to extend the architecture language elements by adding domain-specific metadata.

Apply stereotypes to model elements such as root-level architecture, component architecture, connectors, ports, data interfaces, value types, and functions. Functions only apply to software architectures. A model element can have multiple stereotypes. Stereotypes provide model elements with a common set of property fields, such as mass, cost, and power.

Apropertyis a field in a stereotype. You can specify property values for each element to which the stereotype is applied.

Use properties to store quantitative characteristics, such as weight or speed, that are associated with a model element. Properties can also be descriptive or represent a status. You can view and edit the properties of each element in the architecture model using the Property Inspector.

Aprofileis a package of stereotypes to create a self-consistent domain of element types.

Author profiles and apply profiles to a model using theProfile Editor. You can store stereotypes for a project in one profile or in several. When you save profiles, they are stored in XML files.