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The Concert signature representation: IDL as intermediate language

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Published:01 August 1994Publication History
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Abstract

In the Concert multilanguage distributed programming system, interface specification is the responsibility of programming languages, not a separate IDL. However, an IDL is still necessary in order to define equivalence between declarations in different languages. A single representation is also desirable internally to economize on aspects of the implementation. Consequently, Concert has an IDL as an intermediate language, produced by compiler front-ends and not normally manipulated by programmers. It is formally separated into a contract, which defines interoperability and an endpoint modifier, which captures the local choice of representation. Only contracts are used to define interface equivalence. Our choice of what kinds of information to put in the contract was motivated by a desire to be minimal, thereby enabling maximum feasible interoperability between different expressions of the same abstraction in the same or different languages.

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            cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
            ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 29, Issue 8
            Aug. 1994
            138 pages
            ISSN:0362-1340
            EISSN:1558-1160
            DOI:10.1145/185087
            Issue’s Table of Contents
            • cover image ACM Conferences
              IDL '94: Proceedings of the Workshop on Interface Definition Languages
              August 1994
              138 pages
              ISBN:9781450333207
              DOI:10.1145/185084

            Copyright © 1994 Authors

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            Association for Computing Machinery

            New York, NY, United States

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            • Published: 1 August 1994

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