Ice implements a proprietary application layer communications protocol, called the Ice protocol, that can run over TCP, TLS, UDP, WebSocket and Bluetooth.[2][3] As its name indicates, Ice can be suitable for applications that communicate over the Internet, and includes functionality for traversing firewalls.
History
Initially released in February 2003,[4] Ice was influenced by the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) in its design, and indeed was created by several influential CORBA developers, including Michi Henning. However, according to ZeroC, it was smaller and less complex than CORBA because it was designed by a small group of experienced developers, instead of suffering from design by committee.[5]
In 2004, it was reported that a game called "Wish" by a company named Mutable Realms used Ice.[6] In 2008, it was reported that Big Bear Solar Observatory had used the software since 2005.[7] The source code repository for Ice is on GitHub since May 2015.[8]
Components
Ice components include object-oriented remote-object-invocation, replication, grid-computing, failover, load-balancing, firewall-traversals and publish-subscribe services. To gain access to those services, applications are linked to a stub library or assembly, which is generated from a language-independent IDL-like syntax called slice.
IceStorm
is an object-oriented publish-and-subscribe framework that also supports federation and quality-of-service. Unlike other publish-subscribe frameworks such as Tibco Software's Rendezvous or SmartSockets, message content consist of objects of well defined classes rather than of structured text.
IceGrid
is a suite of frameworks that provide object-oriented load balancing, failover, object-discovery and registry services.
IcePatch
facilitates the deployment of ICE-based software. For example, a user who wishes to deploy new functionality and/or patches to several servers may use IcePatch.
Glacier
is a proxy-based service to enable communication through firewalls, thus making ICE an internet communication engine.
IceBox
Icebox is a service-oriented architecture container of executable services implemented in .dll or .so libraries. This is a lighter alternative to building entire executable for every service.
Slice
Slice is a ZeroC-proprietary file format that programmers follow to edit computer-language independent declarations and definitions of classes, interfaces, structures and enumerations. Slice definition files are used as input to the stub generating process. The stub in turn is linked to applications and servers that should communicate with one another based on interfaces and classes as declared/defined by the slice definitions.
Apart from CORBA, classes and interfaces support inheritance and abstract classes. In addition, slice provides configuration options in form of macros and attributes to direct the code generation process. An example is the directive to generate a certain STLlist<double> template instead of the default, which is to generate a STL vector<double> template.
In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure (subroutine) to execute in a different address space, which is written as if it were a normal (local) procedure call, without the programmer explicitly writing the details for the remote interaction. That is, the programmer writes essentially the same code whether the subroutine is local to the executing program, or remote. This is a form of client–server interaction, typically implemented via a request–response message-passing system. In the object-oriented programming paradigm, RPCs are represented by remote method invocation (RMI). The RPC model implies a level of location transparency, namely that calling procedures are largely the same whether they are local or remote, but usually, they are not identical, so local calls can be distinguished from remote calls. Remote calls are usually orders of magnitude slower and less reliable than local calls, so distinguishing them is important.
The Jakarta Messaging API is a Java application programming interface (API) for message-oriented middleware. It provides generic messaging models, able to handle the producer–consumer problem, that can be used to facilitate the sending and receiving of messages between software systems. Jakarta Messaging is a part of Jakarta EE and was originally defined by a specification developed at Sun Microsystems before being guided by the Java Community Process.
In computing, the Java Remote Method Invocation is a Java API that performs remote method invocation, the object-oriented equivalent of remote procedure calls (RPC), with support for direct transfer of serialized Java classes and distributed garbage-collection.
The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between systems on different operating systems, programming languages, and computing hardware. CORBA uses an object-oriented model although the systems that use the CORBA do not have to be object-oriented. CORBA is an example of the distributed object paradigm.
A web service (WS) is either:
In computer science, inter-process communication (IPC), also spelled interprocess communication, are the mechanisms provided by an operating system for processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categorized as clients and servers, where the client requests data and the server responds to client requests. Many applications are both clients and servers, as commonly seen in distributed computing.
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Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. MOM allows application modules to be distributed over heterogeneous platforms and reduces the complexity of developing applications that span multiple operating systems and network protocols. The middleware creates a distributed communications layer that insulates the application developer from the details of the various operating systems and network interfaces. APIs that extend across diverse platforms and networks are typically provided by MOM.
The Data Distribution Service (DDS) for real-time systems is an Object Management Group (OMG) machine-to-machine standard that aims to enable dependable, high-performance, interoperable, real-time, scalable data exchanges using a publish–subscribe pattern.
Inter-Language Unification or ILU is a method for computer systems to exchange data, bridging differences in the way systems represent the various kinds of data. Even if two systems run on the same computer, or on identical computer hardware, many differences arise from the use of different computer languages to build the systems.
Component-based software engineering (CBSE), also called component-based development (CBD), is a style of software engineering that aims to build software out of loosely-coupled, modular components. It emphasizes the separation of concerns among different parts of a software system.
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In computing, fragmented objects are truly distributed objects. It is a novel design principle extending the traditional concept of stub based distribution.
Component Object Model (COM) is a binary-interface standard for software components introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable inter-process communication object creation in a large range of programming languages. COM is the basis for several other Microsoft technologies and frameworks, including OLE, OLE Automation, Browser Helper Object, ActiveX, COM+, DCOM, the Windows shell, DirectX, UMDF and Windows Runtime. The essence of COM is a language-neutral way of implementing objects that can be used in environments different from the one in which they were created, even across machine boundaries. For well-authored components, COM allows reuse of objects with no knowledge of their internal implementation, as it forces component implementers to provide well-defined interfaces that are separated from the implementation. The different allocation semantics of languages are accommodated by making objects responsible for their own creation and destruction through reference-counting. Type conversion casting between different interfaces of an object is achieved through the QueryInterface method. The preferred method of "inheritance" within COM is the creation of sub-objects to which method "calls" are delegated.
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