Converting from the local representation to XDR is called encoding.
Converting from XDR to the local representation is called decoding.
XDR is implemented as a software library of functions which is portable between different operating systems and is also independent of the transport layer.
Variable-length types such as string and opaque are padded to a total divisible by four bytes.
XDR was developed in the mid 1980s at Sun Microsystems, and first widely published in 1987.