Ice 2.0 released

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ZeroC, Inc. is pleased to announce the availability of the Internet Communications Engine (Ice), version 2.0.

Changes in Ice since version 1.5.1 include:

• New language mappings for Visual Basic .NET and Python 2.3:
  - The Visual Basic mapping includes a Slice compiler, seamless integration with Ice for C#, and support for all of the Ice API features.
  - The Ice extension for Python makes Ice instantly accessible from this popular scripting language, including support for static and dynamic Slice translation, client and server functionality, and asynchronous invocation and dispatch.
• A new lightweight firewall solution called Glacier2 that offers several improvements over the previous implementation:
  - Requires only one open port for connections from clients
  - Easier integration with network firewall devices
  - Lower resource consumption
  - Simpler configuration
• A new streaming API allows you to serialize and deserialize Slice types using the Ice encoding or any other encoding of your choice.
• Support for dynamic invocation and dispatch, which permit you to invoke and receive RPCs without compile-time type knowledge.
• Several new chapters in the documentation, which has been reorganized to be easier to use.
• Numerous other improvements and bug fixes.

For a detailed description of Ice, please have a look at http://www.zeroc.com/ice.html. For a comparison of Ice and CORBA, please see http://www.zeroc.com/iceVsCorba.html.

In addition to traditional proprietary licensing models for commercial customers, Ice is also freely available as Open Source under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). You can download the complete Ice source and documentation from http://www.zeroc.com/download.html.