The Common Component Architecture (CCA) is an environment for component-based software engineering (CBSE) specifically designed to meet the needs of high-performance scientific computing. It has been developed by members of the Common Component Architecture Forum.

This document is intended to guide the reader through a series of increasingly complex tasks starting from composing and running a simple scientific application using pre-installed CCA components and tools, to writing (simple) components of your own. It was originally designed and used to guide the “hands-on” portion of the CCA tutorial, but we hope that it will eventually become complete enough that it can be used for self-study as well.

We assume that you've had an introduction to the terminology and concepts of CBSE and the CCA in particular. If not, we recommend you peruse a recent version of the CCA tutorial presentations before undertaking to complete the tasks in this Guide.