I have solved a problem that prevented me from accessing Java from within IDL. I am using IDL 6.3 on Ubuntu Server 9.04. Trying to use the Java bridge always gave me this error: Error loading sharable executable.     Symbol: IDL_Load, File = /usr/local/itt/idl_6.3/bin/bin.linux.x86/idl_objbridge_java.so     libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I installed libstdc++5: sudo apt-get install libstdc++5. If you are not used to using apt-get you might want to do sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade before the installing libstdc++5. BTW, I discovered that libstdc++6 was already on my Ubuntu 9.04 system. Installing libstdc++5 fixed my problem. cheers, Mark