An interface description language or interface definition language (IDL), is a generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown language. IDLs describe an interface in a language-independent way, enabling communication between software components that do not share one language, for example, between those written in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

and those written in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

. IDLs are commonly used in

remote procedure call In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure (subroutine) to execute in a different address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network), which is coded as if it were a normal (l ...

software. In these cases the machines at either end of the ''link'' may be using different

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s and computer languages. IDLs offer a bridge between the two different systems. Software systems based on IDLs include Sun's ONC RPC,

The Open Group The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing "open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has over 840 member organizations and provides a number of servi ...

Distributed Computing Environment In computing, the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) software system was developed in the early 1990s from the work of the Open Software Foundation (OSF), a consortium (founded in 1988) that included Apollo Computer (part of Hewlett-Packard fr ...

, IBM's

System Object Model In computing, the System Object Model (SOM) is an Object-oriented programming, object-oriented shared library system developed by IBM. DSOM, a distributed version based on CORBA, allowed objects on different computers to communicate. SOM defin ...

, the

Object Management Group The Object Management Group (OMG) is a computer industry standardization, standards consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a range of technologies. Business activities The goal of the OMG was a common portabl ...

CORBA The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between sys ...

(which implements OMG IDL, an IDL based on DCE/RPC) and

Data Distribution Service The Data Distribution Service (DDS) for real-time systems is an Object Management Group (OMG) machine-to-machine (sometimes called middleware or connectivity framework) standard that aims to enable dependable, high-performance, interoperable, re ...

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...

XPCOM Cross Platform Component Object Model (XPCOM) is a cross-platform component model from Mozilla. It is similar to Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). It features multiple language bindings ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Microsoft RPC Microsoft RPC (Microsoft Remote Procedure Call) is a modified version of DCE/RPC. Additions include partial support for UCS-2 (but not Unicode) strings, implicit handles, and complex calculations in the variable-length string and structure paradig ...

(which evolved into

COM Com or COM may refer to: Computing * COM (hardware interface), a serial port interface on IBM PC-compatible computers * COM file, or .com file, short for "command", a file extension for an executable file in MS-DOS * .com, an Internet top-level d ...

and DCOM),

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

's Thrift and

WSDL The Web Services Description Language (WSDL ) is an XML-based interface description language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a web service. The acronym is also used for any specific WSDL description of a web service (also ...

for Web services.

Examples

AIDL

-based, for Android; supports local and remote procedure calls, can be accessed from native applications by calling through

Java Native Interface In software design, the Java Native Interface (JNI) is a foreign function interface programming framework that enables Java code running in a Java virtual machine (JVM) to call and be called by native applications (programs specific to a hardwa ...

(JNI) *

Apache Thrift Thrift is an interface definition language and binary communication protocol used for defining and creating services for numerous programming languages. It was developed at Facebook for "scalable cross-language services development" and as of ...

: from

Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...

, originally developed by

* Avro IDL: for the Apache Avro system *

Concise Data Definition Language Concise is a municipality in the district of Jura-Nord Vaudois in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. History Concise is first mentioned in 1179 as ''Concisa''. Geography Concise has an area, , of . Of this area, or 24.4% is used for agric ...

(CDDL, RFC 8610): A Notation for

CBOR Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) is a binary data serialization format loosely based on JSON authored by C. Bormann. Like JSON it allows the transmission of data objects that contain name–value pairs, but in a more concise manner. ...

and

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...

data structures * CortoScript: Describe data and/or interfaces for systems that require

Semantic interoperability Semantic interoperability is the ability of computer systems to exchange data with unambiguous, shared meaning. Semantic interoperability is a requirement to enable machine computable logic, inferencing, knowledge discovery, and data federation bet ...

* Etch: Cisco's Etch Cross-platform Service Description Language *

Extensible Data Notation Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform. Like other Lisp dialects, Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system. The current development process is comm ...

(EDN):

Clojure Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform. Like other Lisp dialects, Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system. The current development process is comm ...

data format, similar to JSON *

FlatBuffers FlatBuffers is a free software library implementing a serialization format similar to Protocol Buffers, Thrift, Apache Avro, SBE, and Cap'n Proto, primarily written by Wouter van Oortmerssen and open-sourced by Google. It supports “zero-cop ...

: Serialization format from

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

supporting zero-copy deserialization * Franca IDL: the open-source Franca interface definition language
FIDL
Interface description language for the Fuchsia Operating System designed for writing app components in C,

Dart Dart or DART may refer to: * Dart, the equipment in the game of darts Arts, entertainment and media * Dart (comics), an Image Comics superhero * Dart, a character from ''G.I. Joe'' * Dart, a ''Thomas & Friends'' railway engine character * Dar ...

, Go and

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH ...

. *

IDL specification language IDL (''Interface Description Language'') is a software interface description language (also referred to as Interface Descriptor Language) created by William Wulf and John Nestor of Carnegie Mellon University and David Lamb of Queen's University ...

: the original Interface Description Language
IPL
Imandra Protocol Language *

Web-Service Protocol (

JSON-WSP JSON-WSP is a web service protocol that uses JSON for service description, requests and responses. It is inspired from JSON-RPC, but the lack of a service description specification with documentation in JSON-RPC sparked the design of JSON-WSP. ...

) * Lightweight Imaging Device Interface Language *

Microsoft Interface Definition Language Microsoft Interface Definition Language (MIDL) is a text-based interface description language from Microsoft, based on the DCE/RPC DCE/RPC, short for "Distributed Computing Environment / Remote Procedure Calls", is the remote procedure call system ...

(MIDL): the Microsoft extension of OMG IDL to add support for Component Object Model (COM) and

Distributed Component Object Model Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) is a proprietary Microsoft technology for communication between software components on networked computers. DCOM, which originally was called "Network OLE", extends Microsoft's COM, and provides the comm ...

(DCOM) * OMG IDL: standardized by

, used in

(for DCE/RPC services) and DDS (for data modeling), also selected by the W3C for exposing the DOM of XML, HTML, and CSS documents *

OpenAPI Specification The OpenAPI Specification, previously known as the Swagger Specification, is a specification for a machine-readable interface definition language for describing, producing, consuming and visualizing RESTful web services. Previously part of the ...

: a standard for REST interfaces, used by Swagger and other technologies. * Open Service Interface Definitions *

Protocol Buffers Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. It is useful in developing programs to communicate with each other over a network or for storing data. The method involves an i ...

's IDL *

RESTful Service Description Language The RESTful Service Description Language (RSDL) is a machine- and human-readable XML description of HTTP-based web applications (typically REST web services). The language (defined by Michael Pasternak during his work on oVirt RESTful API) allow ...

(RSDL) * Specification Language for

Internet Communications Engine The Internet Communications Engine, or Ice, is an open-source RPC framework developed by ZeroC. It provides SDKs for C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, MATLAB, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Ruby and Swift, and can run on various operating systems, includ ...

(Ice: Slice) *

Universal Network Objects Universal Network Objects (UNO) is the software component, component model used in the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice computer software application suites. It is interface-based and designed to offer interoperability between different programming ...

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

's component model *

Web Application Description Language The Web Application Description Language (WADL) is a machine-readable XML description of HTTP-based web services. WADL models the resources provided by a service and the relationships between them. WADL is intended to simplify the reuse of web serv ...

(WADL) *

Web IDL Web IDL is an interface description language (IDL) format for describing application programming interfaces (APIs) that are intended to be implemented in web browsers. Its adoption was motivated by the desire to improve the interoperability of we ...

: can be used to describe interfaces that are intended to be implemented in web browsers *

Web Services Description Language The Web Services Description Language (WSDL ) is an XML-based interface description language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a web service. The acronym is also used for any specific WSDL description of a web service (also ...

(WSDL) *

XCB XCB (''X protocol C-language Binding'') is a library implementing the client-side of the X11 display server protocol. XCB is written in the C programming language and distributed under the MIT License. The project was started in 2001 by B ...

: X protocol description language for

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

* Cross Platform Interface Description Language (

XPIDL Cross Platform Interface Description Language (XPIDL) is the interface definition language developed by Mozilla.org to specify XPCOM interfaces. It is similar to the Object Management Group's CORBA The Common Object Request Broker Architectu ...

): Mozilla's way to specify XPCOM interfaces

References

{{Reflist

External links

Documenting Software Architecture: Documenting Interfaces
(PDF)
OMG Specification of OMG IDL

Data modeling languages Remote procedure call Specification languages Domain-specific programming languages

Examples

See also

References

External links