The current spec (v1.0) defines Application Components as:

"a collection of code, resources and metadata that provides a set of related services or functionality. Examples include a Java library, or a PHP module."

We need to clarify that Application Components may also include data (i.e. a dataset that needs to be loaded into an SQL table in order for the application to work) and identity (i.e. a set of account information that needs to be loaded into an identity store in order for the application to work).

This issue was raised by Gilbert Pilz and was drupal issue # 1073