The XDR Approach

XDR takes a canonical approach to data communication: it defines a standard XDR representation for data and makes its clients use it.

If a program wishes to use XDR to transmit data it must firstly translate its internal representation of the data to the XDR representation.

A program receiving XDR information performs the opposite mapping: it converts the incoming XDR data to its own representation

The advent of a new machine/language has no impact on existing users: the new machine is 'taught' to convert between XDR and its own representation and can thereafter communicate with all other XDR users.