Terminology
SCA
The SCA specifications 1collectively define many terms that are used throughout the Tuscany SCA implementation, for example, SCADomain, Composite, Component, Service, Reference. Tuscany itself uses a few terms that are worth explaining.
Distributed Domain
An SCA Domain that is "distributed over a series of interconnected runtime nodes".
Runtime
A runtime groups together one or more (distributed) nodes. It describes the compute resources that will run the components of an SCA Domain.
Node
Provides an environment inside which SCA component instances execute. It's an operating system process, separate from other Nodes. Its form may be as simple as a single Java VM or it may take the more scalable and reliable form, such as a compute cluster.
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A node must be able to expose the service endpoints required by the components it runs. It must be able to support the client technology for the references of associated components.
Node Domain ?
The part of a Distributed Domain that represent the components that will run on a Node.
Node Runtime ?
The Tuscany framework that runs Component Instances in for components in a Node Domain
Component Instance
The running component that services requests. A single component definition in a SCDL file may give rise to one or more component instances depending on how the component is scoped (using the @Scope annotation).
SDO
DAS
Config File
XML file that is used to set up a DAS instance. It defines how DAS will treat the data when converting it from the data source to the SDO Data Graph or vice-versa.
References
1 http://www.osoa.org/display/Main/Service+Component+Architecture+Specifications