SICL or "Standard Instrument Control Library"
is a standard library used to communicate with instruments. It's incorporated into Keysight's "IO Suite" and in National Instruments "Max". The library can be used by graphical and textual languages.
SICL is a modular instrument communications library that works with a variety of computer architectures, I/O interfaces, and operating systems. Applications written in C/C++/C# or Visual BASIC using this library can be ported at the source code level from one system to another with no (or very few) changes.
SICL uses standard, commonly used functions to communicate over a wide variety of interfaces. For example, a program written to communicate with a particular instrument on a given interface can also communicate with an equivalent instrument on a different type of interface.