The fact that the types are defined and implemented in a different programming language is hidden from the application. To better understand the concept of polylingual interoperability and its relationship to the PolySPIN mechanism and the PolySPINner toolset, we expand on the geographical map example outlined in Section 2 . Later an application, perhaps written in CLOS, needs to access and manipulate these maps. Figure 1 illustrates the concept. It is megaprogramming friendly.
Applications can share and integrate data after it has been defined and created.
It has minimal impact on software developers. Existing applications do not have to be manually modified in order to access complex data defined in different programing languages. It supports realistic interlanguage type compatibility. For example, applications can access data where only a subset of features is needed. Figure 2 gives an overview of the toolset, along with its inputs and outputs.