What is Interface Definition Language or IDL?

Interface Definition Language(IDL)

IDL or Interface Definition Language is the standard for defining the interfaces in component software development. Microsoft's COM/DCOM and JAVA, CORBA obeys this standard in interface base development.

By convention, the file that contains interface and type library definitions is called an IDL file, and has an .idl extension. In reality, the MIDL compiler will parse an interface definition file regardless of its file name extension. An interface is identified by the keyword interface.

Each interface consists of a header, which contains attributes that apply to the entire interface, and a body, which contains the remaining interface definitions.
The interface header has the following format:
[ interface-attribute-list] interface interface-name

The interface body, which is enclosed in braces ({ }), contains the data types that will be used in remote procedure calls and prototypes for the functions that will be executed remotely. An interface body can contain imports, pragmas, constant declarations, type declarations, and function declarations. Except in OSF-compatibility mode, the MIDL compiler also allows implicit declarations in the form of variable definitions.
Note that the OSF-DCE specification for RPC interfaces does not allow multiple interfaces. Therefore, if you are compiling in MIDL's OSF-compatibility mode (/osf), your IDL file can have only one interface.

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