A C/C++ transport layer plug-in is implemented as a dynamic shared library. In order for the IAF to be able to load and use it, it must comply with Apama's transport plug-in development specification. This specification describes the structure of a transport layer plug-in, and the C/C++ functions it needs to implement so that it can be used with the IAF. The specification also provides a mechanism for startup and configuration parameters to be passed to the plug-in from the IAF's configuration file.

Property names and values used by transport plug-ins must be in UTF-8 format.

A transport layer plug-in implementation must include the C header file EventTransport.h. It also needs to include EventCodec.h, to allow the event transport to pass messages to codecs within the IAF codec layer.