This tutorial will introduce the Common Component Architecture (CCA) at both conceptual and practical levels. Components are software objects that encapsulate useful functionality and interact with other components only through well-defined interfaces. Component-based approaches to software development, including the CCA, provide a means to manage the complexity of large-scale software applications and facilitate the reuse and interoperability of code. The component concept is widely used in commercial/business world (e.g., CORBA, COM, and Enterprise JavaBeans) and is popular in visualization as well (e.g., AVS and Data Explorer), but none of these environments is well suited to use in HPC environments. The CCA was designed specifically with the needs of high-performance scientific computing in mind, including the existence of large body of existing code that cannot easily be rewritten. We will cover the concepts of components and the CCA in particular; the tools provided  by the CCA environment, including the Babel system for language interoperability; the creation of CCA-compatible components; and their use in scientific applications.

For more information, please visit the Common Component Architecture Forum and the DOE Center for Component Technology for Terascale Simulation Software (CCTTSS) websites.