Microsoft Interface Definition Language (MIDL) is a text-based interface description language from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, based on the

DCE/RPC DCE/RPC, short for "Distributed Computing Environment / Remote Procedure Calls", is the remote procedure call system developed for the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). This system allows programmers to write distributed software as if it ...

IDL which it extends for use with the Microsoft

Component Object Model Component Object Model (COM) is a binary-interface technology for software components from Microsoft that enables using objects in a language-neutral way between different programming languages, programming contexts, processes and machines ...

. Its compiler is also called MIDL.

Version History

MIDL 1.0 is a standard DCE/RPC IDL with enhancements made for defining COM coclasses and interfaces. MIDL 2.0 (also known as MIDLRT) is a updated version of syntax that was developed in-house by Microsoft for use on the Windows platform that allowed for declaring Windows Runtime APIs. Various built in Windows Runtime APIs are written with MIDL 2.0 syntax and are available in the Windows SDK folder. The most recent version of MIDL is MIDL 3.0 released on December 30, 2021. Version 3.0 is a more streamlined version of MIDL 2.0, utilizing more modern and simplified syntax familiar to C, C++, C#, or

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

. MIDL 3.0 is also more concise than the previous versions, allowing for programs to be reduced by almost two thirds in length due to using built-in reasonable defaults for attributes and being more concise.

References

# stevewhims (2021-10-21)
"Microsoft Interface Definition Language - Win32 apps"
''learn.microsoft.com''. Retrieved 2024-10-29. # stevewhims (2022-07-12)
"Introduction to Microsoft Interface Definition Language 3.0 - Windows UWP applications"
''learn.microsoft.com''. Retrieved 2024-10-29. # stevewhims (2021-12-30)
"Microsoft Interface Definition Language 3.0 reference - Windows UWP applications"
''learn.microsoft.com''. Retrieved 2024-10-29.

External links

Microsoft Docs reference

Interface Definition Language An interface description language or interface definition language (IDL) is a generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown language. IDLs are usually use ...

Component-based software engineering Microsoft application programming interfaces Object-oriented programming Object models {{compu-lang-stub

Version History

References

See also

External links