Why IDLs are not ideal
Alan David Kaplan, John V. E. Ridgway, Jack C. Wileden · International Workshop on Software Specification and Design · 1998
The dominant approach to addressing heterogeneity, interoperability and legacy software components at present is based on the use of interface description languages (IDLs) such as the OMG/CORBA IDL. We believe that this approach has serious drawbacks. In this paper we outline our objections to the IDL-based approach, then describe ongoing research directed toward producing a superior alternative, which we refer to as the polylingual systems approach. We illustrate both our objections to the IDL-based approach and also our new polylingual systems approach with examples based on the IWSSD common case study.