IDL (Interactive Data Language)

IDL (Interactive Data Language) is NV5 Geospatial's scientific programming language, graphics system and development environment for turning large, multi-dimensional numerical data into analysis results, visualisations and distributable applications. It is used across scientific disciplines. Its link to Earth observation is data access: it reads hierarchical scientific formats including HDF, HDF-EOS, CDF and netCDF, alongside TIFF, JPEG, PNG and custom binary or ASCII data, retrieves data from remote HTTP and FTP servers, and acts as a client to OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) servers. NV5 states that NASA uses IDL to analyse satellite data for space exploration and Earth monitoring, and IDL is the language used to extend and customise NV5's ENVI image-analysis software.

IDL ships libraries for image processing (geometry transforms, mapping, masking, warping, region-of-interest analysis, filtering), signal processing with a wavelet toolkit, and machine-learning classification (neural networks, Softmax, SVM, K-means, autoencoders), plus an optional Advanced Math and Stats module built on the IMSL C Numerical Library. A two-way Python bridge, a Jupyter kernel, a Visual Studio Code extension and a package manager connect it to other tools, and it can call, or be called from, applications written in C, C++, Java and Visual Basic. Compiled programs can be shared through the no-cost IDL Virtual Machine or under runtime licences. The current release, IDL 9.3, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. IDL Agent, an AI assistant included with all new IDL purchases and with active IDL maintenance, writes, runs, explains and troubleshoots IDL code.

Published users include NOAA, which uses IDL to process terabytes of acoustic data daily for whale detection, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, whose tsunami Decision Support Tool is built in IDL, and Japan's Institute of Statistical Mathematics and Meteorological Research Institute.