A Service Component Architecture (SCA) component is a configured instance of an implementation, which is program code that implements one or more business functions such as Java classes. Components provide and consume services. The business functions provide services. Components consume services by referring to services provided by other components. The component configuration sets values for properties that are declared by the implementation and specifies references that point to services provided by other components.
The implementation defines the service in code that is appropriate for the chosen language. For example, a Java component might describe its service using Java interfaces. Supported implementations include Java Pojo, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) integration, SCA composites, and Spring 2.5.5 containers.
More than one component can use the same implementation.