CCL is a notation for specifying components and their assemblies. From CCL, interpretations are defined that map assemblies to predictive models of assembly behavior—that is, to reasoning frameworks.

• CCL is an architecture description language that has been specialized to the Pin component technology.
• Component behavior in CCL is specified in a restricted dialect of UML 2.0 statecharts.
• CCL front end performs static semantic checks and produces an annotated abstract syntax tree (AST) for well-formed assemblies.
• CCL currently supports a Java and C-language interface to the AST and provides an XML externalization of the AST for tool interchange.
• Pin components and assemblies (controllers) can be automatically generated from CCL specifications.
• Interpretations from CCL to the ComFoRT reasoning framework and Lambda-star reasoning framework have also been developed.

A complete formal semantics for CCL is currently being developed.

The following items are now available:

• CSP semantics for component composition in CCL
• High-level but informal description of CCL
• BNF for the syntax of CCL.