A method of accessing, from a host application written in a first programming language, a subroutine written in a second programming language can include serializing input data expressed as an XTable formatted in a first programming language into a string representation of the input data. The method further can include de-serializing the string representation of the input data as an XTable formatted in the second programming language and executing the subroutine, wherein the XTable formatted in the second programming language is processed as input. Output data returned from the subroutine that is expressed as an XTable formatted in the second programming language can be serialized into a string representation of the output data. The string representation of the output data can be de-serialized into an XTable formatted in the first programming language.