[dragonwriter]

Sure, you can do that; but the problem is that you then have to worry about type system mismatches between the interface definition language, and the back- and front-end application languages.

There have been lots of things that do something like this: SOAP and the associated WS-* standards are probably the best known.

[dllthomas]

Very true, and certainly still a big undertaking, depending a little on how well the type systems at either end line up.