Talk:Interface description language

Restart the discussion on the correct term

 * Interface Description Language appears to be the genuine term (see David Lamb Phd. Thesis 1983).
 * Interface Definition Language has been used by almost all middleware implementations, which support RPC or RMI and define the remote interface in a separate language. See DCE/RPC, Microsoft RPC and CORBA.
 * As far as I currently remember, primary literature also uses I-Definition-L (I'll check tomorrow).

Sun RPC uses the term RPC Language.

So, while the genuine term was I-Description-L everyone afterwards used I-Definition-L. It is quite impossible, that this was just an accident. According to my modest understanding (English is obviously not my native language) description has not just the same meaning as definition. Hence, there might have been a common agreement to a change of the term for a correction of its actual meaning. On the other side, I know that C differentiates between the declaration of a function's signature (e.g. in a header file) and the definition of a function as a term for its implementation (i.e. the code in the body). But there is no need to generalise this proprietary interpretation.

BTW: The actual Interface Description Language, i.e. that one published by Lamb, can be found under the topic IDL specification language in this wiki.

82.82.138.197 (talk) 18:07, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Interface Definition Language is something different ... ?
The article starts

"interface description language (or interface definition language)"

I believe that interface description language is the definitively only correct phrase.

OMG defined a language called "interface definition language" also abbreviated to IDL. This language is a concrete interface description language.

I know that a lot of places on the internet, it says that IDL (not the specific one) is an acronym for interface definition language, and sometimes (like now on Wikipedia) it says that it is an acronym for both "~ description ~" and "~ definition ~", but I think this is because people have read about OMG's IDL without knowing that it was different from the term IDL, and then passed this misunderstanding on.

I think that the parenthesis should simply be deleted, and possibly replaced by a line saying that "interface description language often used interchangeably with interface definition language, but the latter is a specific interface description language defined by OMG" or something like that.

The problem is that I am not really sure about this!!!

What do you think?

--Velle 19:12, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Interface Description Language and Interface based programming is completely different!!
The first is a way to describe an interface in a neutral way.

The second is a programming paradigm. It is widely used in | Spring (you don't know which implementation you are getting, but you can be certain that this object supports a specified set of methods)

Minirich (talk) 08:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I would not say that interface based programming qualifies as a programming paradigm but you are correct that it is different from IDL. 2600:8805:4201:2D40:F158:4B8B:237B:F73 (talk) 10:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Merge the lot under "Interfaces"
Would it be to larger subject to merge the lot under "Interfaces". In one location the purpose of interfaces could be discussed, followed by various related techniques and technologies.

Also, I have a book that refers to Interface Definition Language. Just because an individual has only heard of one phrase to discribe something does not mean other people are not using different phrases for the same meaning. An encyclopaedia needs to cover all phrases used to discuss a subject. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnPThompson (talk • contribs) 13:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)