Purpose and Scope of the Document The purpose of this document is to give a practical introduction to writing Java components for ALMA software, using the ACS container/component framework. You should have read the section on Technical Architecture in [1] or have learned otherwise about the concepts of container/component and XML binding classes to be used for ALMA software. You should also be familiar with the ALMA build environment (see [8]), even though a few things are explained redundantly in this tutorial. While describing the steps involved in developing two sample components, I will try to provide information beyond the scope of the demo components in order to help using the framework for concrete ALMA subsystem development. However, this is not a concept or design document for the respective parts of ACS. It should help you to get started nonetheless. The Java container/component model is fully integrated in ACS. It is meant to be used by ALMA subsystems or the parts of them that don’t have real-time requirements and don’t directly control hardware devices.