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.
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 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.
An interface description language or interface definition language (IDL) is a generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown language. IDLs are usually used to describe data types and interfaces in a language-independent way, for example, between those written in C++ and those written in Java.
In distributed computing, an object request broker (ORB) is a concept of a middleware, which allows program calls to be made from one computer to another via a computer network, providing location transparency through remote procedure calls. ORBs promote interoperability of distributed object systems, enabling such systems to be built by piecing together objects from different vendors, while different parts communicate with each other via the ORB. Common Object Request Broker Architecture) standardizes the way ORB may be implemented.
Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. Message-oriented middleware is in contrast to streaming-oriented middleware where data is communicated as a sequence of bytes with no explicit message boundaries. Note that streaming protocols are almost always built above protocols using discrete messages such as frames (Ethernet), datagrams (UDP), packets (IP), cells (ATM), et al.
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.
The Spring Framework is an application framework and inversion of control container for the Java platform. The framework's core features can be used by any Java application, but there are extensions for building web applications on top of the Java EE platform. The framework does not impose any specific programming model.. The framework has become popular in the Java community as an addition to the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) model. The Spring Framework is free and open source software.
A message broker is an intermediary computer program module that translates a message from the formal messaging protocol of the sender to the formal messaging protocol of the receiver. Message brokers are elements in telecommunication or computer networks where software applications communicate by exchanging formally-defined messages. Message brokers are a building block of message-oriented middleware (MOM) but are typically not a replacement for traditional middleware like MOM and remote procedure call (RPC).
Talarian was a provider of real-time infrastructure software. Now part of TIBCO, it was a veteran provider of message-oriented middleware.
Apache Axis2 is a web service engine. It is a redesign and re-write of the widely used Apache Axis SOAP stack. Implementations of Axis2 are available in Java and C.
Thrift is an IDL and binary communication protocol used for defining and creating services for programming languages. It was developed by Facebook. Since 2020, it is an open source project in the Apache Software Foundation.
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 technology for software components from Microsoft that enables using objects in a language-neutral way between different programming languages, programming contexts, processes and machines.
Robotics middleware is middleware to be used in complex robot control software systems.
Live distributed object refers to a running instance of a distributed multi-party protocol, viewed from the object-oriented perspective, as an entity that has a distinct identity, may encapsulate internal state and threads of execution, and that exhibits a well-defined externally visible behavior.
ZeroMQ is an asynchronous messaging library, aimed at use in distributed or concurrent applications. It provides a message queue, but unlike message-oriented middleware, a ZeroMQ system can run without a dedicated message broker; the zero in the name is for zero broker. The library's API is designed to resemble Berkeley sockets.
WAMP is a WebSocket subprotocol registered at IANA, specified to offer routed RPC and PubSub. Its design goal is to provide an open standard for soft, real-time message exchange between application components and ease the creation of loosely coupled architectures based on microservices. Because of this, it is a suitable enterprise service bus (ESB), fit for developing responsive web applications or coordinating multiple connected IoT devices.
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