  A new general decomposition theory inspired from modular graph decomposition
is presented. This helps unifying modular decomposition on different
structures, including (but not restricted to) graphs. Moreover, even in the
case of graphs, the terminology ``module'' not only captures the classical
graph modules but also allows to handle 2-connected components, star-cutsets,
and other vertex subsets. The main result is that most of the nice algorithmic
tools developed for modular decomposition of graphs still apply efficiently on
our generalisation of modules. Besides, when an essential axiom is satisfied,
almost all the important properties can be retrieved. For this case, an
algorithm given by Ehrenfeucht, Gabow, McConnell and Sullivan 1994 is
generalised and yields a very efficient solution to the associated
decomposition problem.
