An interface description language (or alternately, interface definition language), or IDL for short, is a computer language used to describe a software component's interface. IDLs describe an interface in a language-neutral way, enabling communication between software components that do not share a language – for example, between components written in C++ and components written in Java. The term computer language is a more expansive and alternate term for the more commonly-used term programming language. ... Software component representations: above the representation used in UML, below the representation commonly used by Microsofts COM objects. ... An interface defines the communication boundary between two entities, such as a piece of software, a hardware device, or a user. ... Software component representations: above the representation used in UML, below the representation commonly used by Microsofts COM objects. ... C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose, high-level programming language with low-level facilities. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ...

IDLs are commonly used in remote procedure call software. In these cases the machines at either end of the "link" may be using different operating systems and computer languages. IDLs offer a bridge between the two different systems. Remote procedure call (RPC) is a protocol that allows a computer program running on one computer to cause a subroutine on another computer to be executed without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this interaction. ... An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ...

Software systems based on IDLs include Sun's ONC RPC, The Open Group's Distributed Computing Environment, IBM's System Object Model, the Object Management Group's CORBA, and SOAP for Web services. SUN redirects here. ... ONC RPC - short for Open Network Computing Remote Procedure Call, sometimes also called Sun RPC because it was originally developed by Sun Microsystems, is a widely deployed remote procedure call system. ... This article or section reads like an advertisement. ... The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is a software system developed in the early 1990s by a consortium that included Apollo Computer (later part of Hewlett-Packard), IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, and others. ... International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. ... The System Object Model is an object-oriented shared library system developed by IBM. A distributed version based on CORBA, DSOM allowed objects on different computers to communicate. ... Object Management Group (OMG) is a consortium, originally aimed at setting standards for distributed object-oriented systems, and is now focused on modeling (programs, systems and business processes) and model-based standards in some 20 vertical markets. ... In computing, Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard for software componentry, created and controlled by the Object Management Group (OMG). ... This article is about a computer protocol. ... The W3C defines a Web service[1] as a software system designed to support interoperable Machine to Machine interaction over a network. ...

Interface description languages

• IDL specification language, the original Interface Description Language.
• Microsoft Interface Definition Language
• Open Service Interface Definitions
• Platform-Independent Component Modeling Language
• Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
• WDDX
• XML-RPC, the predecessor of SOAP

IDL (short for Interface Description Language) is a software interface specification language created by Lamb, Wulf and Nestor at Queens University. ... Microsoft Interface Definition Language (MIDL) is a text-based interface description language by Microsoft, based on the DCE/RPC IDL. Its compiler is also called MIDL. MSDN Reference Category: ... // Description Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs) are programmatic interface specifications describing services. ... This article is about a computer protocol. ... WDDX (Web Distributed Data eXchange) is a mechanism to pass data between different computers. ... XML-RPC is a remote procedure call protocol encoded in XML. It is a very simple protocol, defining only a handful of data types and commands, and the entire description can be printed on two pages of paper. ...

See also

• Software componentry

Software component representations: above the representation used in UML, below the representation commonly used by Microsofts COM objects. ...

External links

• OMG Tutorial on OMG IDL
• OMG Specification of OMG IDL