Interface Definition Language - idl

Can anybody explain to me what is meant by Interface Definition Language on a high level. Why it is used and how and where.
Any ebook, concrete definitions and examples will also help.
Anybody who have worked/used this please share your knowledge. No googled resource please.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Gaurav

IDL is a Interface Definition Language and is generally used for defining programming language independent interfaces. A special compiler creates interfaces (or similar) for a specific language, i.e. Java.
IDL is often used in distributed systems, for example in the UNO Framework used by OpenOffice

Related

Standard language or model theory for Complex Event Processing system

We are developing a library for complex event processing.
Is there any standard or widely accepted language with clear semantics that we could based on?
After some research it seems all available options are vendor/platform specific.
Yes there is no common CEP language now, Most of the venders are either using a SQL like language or a UI based tool.
SQL like language seems to be the more feasible approach due to easy of development of a CEP engine,
We have tried to come up with a SQL like language for a Java based CEP engine.
This might be helpful for you.
Suho

Is it possible to write console applications in scheme?

Does anyone know of any semi-portable way to write console applications (e.g. basic animation) in scheme? I heard of an ncurses wrapper but I couldn't find anything.
You can't do any GUI in a portable way in Scheme -- because you only get very basic file IO.
Depends on your scheme of choice. Chicken Scheme, for instance, has good ties with C and has various Curses libraries. See their code examples:
ncurses
mojo, curses for the lazy :)
Have you checked out Guile? I've never used it myself except just to play around, but it is pretty cool, and even has a little GUI support. Not sure about portability, except it should port just fine between different Unix systems, but the same can be said about ncurses.
Don't give up hope! If you're dedicated to developing in Scheme, you can.

Implementing a Command Line Interpreter with a functional language

I'm toying with the idea of writing a command line interpreter and I suspect that a functional language such as Clojure is well suited to this task.
I am however 5 years out of a CS degree and my only experience with functional languages was a harrowing experience with Haskell in a third year languages course.
So, is a language such as Clojure ideal for this task? If not, what is an ideal language.
Loose requirements:
Has to run on a JVM
Provide an interactive shell where users enter commands with a CLI like syntax
User commands ultimately end up making calls to a remote service using SOAP.
Thanks!
You can approximately do that out-of-the-box with Clojure and Scala, and with Java if you add BeanShell. You might look at the REPL facilities they already have.
I imagine that's suited only for sophisticated users. But really, it's hard to imagine a language that wouldn't do a fine job on a CLI.
Deciding between platforms, the more of a modern system it is, the more it will have scripting language convenience.
I certainly know what I would use given your requirements: JRuby. (It has an out-of-the-box REPL, too.)
I don't think a CLI has any specific requirements language-wise; you could probably do just as well writing it in Java or Scala. Ultimately I think language choice is down to:
Which ones you are most comfortable working with.
Which ones have adequate library support for what you want to do (i.e. web services).

Symbolic Mathematics for .NET

I am looking for symbolic mathematics library for .NET framework. I have looked at Math.net but it's not something usable yet. Do you know if there is another library exists?
This might be overkill, but you can talk to Mathematica from .NET, using its .NET/Link API.
Symbolism is a library which implements automatic simplification of algebraic expressions in C#. It can be used as a foundation for more complex symbolic mathematics operations.

Why is Peer-to-Peer programming a hard topic to obtain good research for?

After reading a bit more about how Gnutella and other P2P networks function, I wanted to start my own peer-to-peer system. I went in thinking that I would find plenty of tutorials and language-agnostic guidelines which could be applied, however I was met with a vague simplistic overview.
I could only find very small, precise P2P code which didn't do much more than use client/server architecture on all users, which wasn't really what I was looking for. I wanted something like Gnutella, but there doesn't seem to be any articles out in the open for joining the network.
RFC 4981, with its huge bibliography, could be a very good starting point.
I had to write a basic Gnutella client in C# using Web Services and I think the class notes on the P2P stuff are still available here and here.
You might have better success researching Bittorrent, I believe that the creator has written some papers, and it seems others are as well.
BitTyrant
Bittorent.org, see the developers section
I don't know what platform you are trying to use, but here is a decent article on the subject for .NET.
I've found the TheoryOrg Unofficial BitTorrent Specification to be the best online source for Bittorrent information. Also, the Monotorrent code is fairly simple and easy to understand. There's also a project called "GCT" which implements JGroups style P2P for LAN/Multicast environments, and its code is similarly easy to understand (if a bit buggy).
You can try to read Gnutella2 and try to implement messaging. For reading conceptual material you can read Distributed Systems by Andrew Tannenbaum.
You can have a look at JXTA. It's intention was to be a generic, platform agnostic p2p framework, in contrast to other p2p implementations which are usually for a very specific purpose (such as Gnutella).
Don't be fooled by it's Java appearance, there are binding available for C/C++/C#, but the core protocols are implemented in XML which should translate to any language.
You can also download a free book here.

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