Talk:System of systems

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This System of Systems page was created on September 7th, 2005 and has been edited on several occasions by Mr. Oleg Sindiy, a graduate student in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated; please feel free to also look at our System of Systems research website at System-of-Systems Research Webite. - 01:55, 20 June 2008 98.220.22.106 (Talk) (4,388 bytes)

The history of this article, see here gives the right data. This article is created 16:18, 19 July 2004 by the anon user 62.244.184.66 (Talk). Several people have made valuable contributions to this article. If you want to introduce yourselve, start an userpage. This kind of desinformation is not acceptable here. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 02:12, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Definition

I would propose the following definition for System of Systems:

It is a assemblage of task oriented or dedicated systems that pool their resources and capabilities to obtain a new system, more complex, offering more functionalities and performances than the sum of it parts.

- Combining multiple systems into a group does not necessarily improve performance, which is a misconception of SoS. The individuals also don't need to be task oriented. While I can see the advantage of designing them this way, it shouldn't be required as part of its general definition. -Jheld —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.123.51.32 (talk) 05:08, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Introduction isn't quite right

The current introduction says:

System-of-Systems is a relatively new term that is being applied primarily to government projects for addressing large scale inter-disciplinary problems...

The term system of systems is also a term mentioned in one of the first systems theory articles General Systems Theory The Skeleton of Science from Kenneth E. Boulding see [1]. Boulding has gives this term an fundamental meaning, with should also be meantioned in this article. - Mdd 22:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

How to write system of systems

Two points. First, there's no good reason to capitalize, à la "A naval carrier group is a System of Systems." Second, there is also no good reason to hyphenate along the lines of "The Internet is a system-of-systems." This latter is no more called for than, say, "Richard Daley is the mayor-of-Chicago," or even "The dollar's fall will affect our balance-of-payments."

That either practice might be current among practitioners in the field is not particularly compelling—nobody said engineers and scientists made particularly apt copy editors. Better to refer, for example, to the Chicago Manual of Style, which would have us hyphenate the term only when it is used as an adjective and appears before the noun it modifies. Thus

• Our only hope for a complete understanding is to take a system-of-systems approach.
• System-of-systems engineering poses a wealth of novel challenges.

but

• The human body is the ultimate system of systems.

And a related point. When it is used as the name of a concept it should be singular because it refers to one single concept. In its distinct use to refer to more than one example, it should be plural. Thus

• A reason modern figher aircraft are so complex is that they are systems of systems.

but

• System of systems is a new field.

PaulTanenbaum 16:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

In the seven descriptions mentioned in the article I have seen all kind of ways of putting it. Because in the theory and practice they write it differently, I see no reason to write this word combination in only one way in this article. - Mdd 20:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't suppose there is any reason to write it in only one way... B-ond a D-zire 4 clarity, consistency, and a certain level of craftsmanship in Wikipedia. I'm not proposing to enforce my particular views against some tide of popular opposition: note that I'd written "there is no reason to" capitalize or hyphenate, rather than "thou shalt not." But it seems to me that to vary usage widely within a single article—even with the honorable intent of saluting freedom of expression and recognizing the fluid state of this young discipline—looks shoddy and offers no assistance to anyone who might actually be seeking a decent precedent to follow in their own writing.—PaulTanenbaum 23:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for explaning some more. I'm not a expert in this particular field and didn't write the article. I wikified the article and gave my opinion here. I do wonder however, if the need for consistency and a decent precedent is only high for you or also in the theory and practice?

If the neeed is high there to, then certain sources probably allready metioned this. And if that is so, a solution here is to make it an item in the article itselve. Maybe...!? - Mdd 18:27, 5 July 2007 (UTC)