SYSML14 — N-ary Allocation needs better definition, or deletion

An unnumbered constraint on the Allocate relationship states: "A single «allocate» dependency shall have only one client (from), but may have one or many suppliers (to)."

The use or meaning of this n-ary relationship is not described. An informal survey of RTF members indicated that this n-ary allocation capability has not been implemented in any tool, nor has it been used by practitioners.

Note that Satisfy relationship (see 16.3.2.6) serves a similar purpose to Allocate, but does not require an n-ary implementation.

Removal of the n-ary requirement on Allocate would simplify efforts to unify SysML relationship dependencies. This requirement should either be 1) rationalized, elaborated and applied consistently across similar SysML relationships, or 2) deleted to facilitate ongoing SysML improvements.

To simplify SysML, the 1.4 RTF resolved to remove n-ary allocations from the
specification. The functionality that might be enabled by n-ary allocations can be
supported by constraints across multiple binary allocations.