Hi
First, welcome
Everyone defines asset differently based on business needs, When you are looking at CCA, think of it as two independent parts (extremely loosely connected), which is Management Profile Discovery and Network Discover. You can choose to use one or the other, or both; again, it comes down to your business needs
What are you looking to get \ gather \ accomplish?
The Management Profile gathers detailed information using Blueprints (and the information can actually vary form real basic such as version of software, to detailed info such as a configuration parameter(s) of a specific application in a specific location). Blueprints can gather whatever you want to gather. You can gather this info using Agents (which is highly recommended, but do have option for WMI and/or SSH)
The Network Discovery (NDG) gets "static \ hardcoded" data, in sense of it will only get what we tell it to get (built into code). All information is gathered agentless (SSH,WMI, SDK for Vmware). One OOTB advantage with NDG is you can get communication relationships and help map out network dependency mapping.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg as that is much more involved, but hope it helps guide you to where you need. Please let me know if you need a clarification on anything else