Understanding any IDL lesson one: DCE and CORBA

The co-existence of middleware platforms, eg. DCE and CORBA, creates a new problem of heterogeneity-the heterogeneity of middleware platforms. In this paper a partial approach to overcoming this heterogeneity is presented-the translation between different interface definition languages (IDL) and the comparison of interface specifications in different IDLs. In particular, a mapping between DCE IDL and OMG IDL and the corresponding translation tools are presented. Furthermore, various definitions of sub-typing of interface specifications are investigated for their suitability in comparing specifications in different IDLs.